Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/01/03/watch-car-cruises-through-flo.html
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Further evidence that stupidity knows no bounds.
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That was a MINI! I’m impressed it was not washed away.
Loved the super-compressed soundtrack as well.
In other news, I have begun to notice more cars/trucks in my area just north of Chicago sporting “snorkels”.
A Jeep, a Land Cruiser, something else I forgot what.
Each one of them was immaculately clean. Detailed to the Nth degree.
I think the snorkel may be the new “car bra” for car fashion.
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Ugh, I hope not. When I lived in Colorado, you had a snorkel because you’d had the rare pleasure of your previous Jeep stalling mid-stream, and getting to watch it wash away and be bashed on some rocks. The only way those off-road vehicles could be called immaculate was if you carved the word “immaculate” out of the body filth.
I just found out what Buckfast is. Thank you.
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While I violently agree that stupidity knows no bounds, I’ve seen some further detail on this video and in this case the driver’s action made sense, IMO… it’s not clear from the video, but she was actually trapped in a carpark and faced with the choice of driving to the exit or fleeing on foot.
Faced with the prospect of abandoning the car to certain engine-wreckage by the rising waters, I might have done the same. If it had stalled halfway she could still choose the “flee on foot” option.
YMMV 
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No no no, please, please rethink this.
Let me reword this. She was safe in a carpark and chose to leave and put her life at risk. This was her biggest mistake. If you are isolated but safe in a flood situation, don’t endanger yourself, stay safe and call for help.
Stalling the car is a risk but a fairly trivial one compared to the risk of life. Cars ride on inflated tires, which float. As a rule of thumb once the water reaches the tire rim the car will lose traction, start floating, and then move like a piece of debris in the water. The driver was very very lucky this didn’t occur when the wave hit half way through the video.
There is a nice 30s video which shows this effect,
As for getting out of a car you have no control over while it is being swept away by flood waters that you chose to drive in to… Once the water reaches the bottom of the door the pressure will prevent the door from opening and if your electrical system shorts out the power windows won’t work either. If you do exit the car 15cm of moving water has tremendous power behind it, you won’t be on your feet for long.
(edit: embedded video)
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*Unless you drive a Lotus.
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Yes, this. When I lived in Northern NM, I was one of those Jeep drivers without a snorkel. We swamped my Jeep after driving through an innocuous-looking stream in the Colorado mountains and we spent hours drying off the spark plugs with our shirts, wishing we had had a snorkel for the air intake or at least the presence of mind to check the depth of the stream before we had attempted to cross. (While we did make it to the other side of the stream before the engine sputtered and died, we had to re-cross the stream to get back.)
My idea for an electric car is something like a mini moke with four wheel drive. You would put on scuba gear and drive it straight down a boat ramp and across the bottom.
Is this a trolley?
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and respond, briefly!
HTF can you tell that from the video? If the park is bounded by walls, (which many are for security), she’d be trapped by the rising waters. You assume much here.
You have clearly never driven on a flooded street, nor even observed someone else doing so. Do some math before assuming that. (The linked video is a rare combination of factors taken advantage of under controlled conditions.) It’s also possible that the driver has driven that car in floods before and knows exactly how it will handle. Again, don’t assume.
Not true, unless you’re a child or elderly it must be quite a bit higher before that becomes a problem, (on the downstream side anyway). Wait, was that another assumption?
Technically a possible risk, but negligible in this case. The water isn’t rising that fast, and even if it was the car engine will usually die before that becomes a problem. I.e. plenty of warning.
That’s not even halfway up your shin. Again, unless you’re a child or frail this is not a concern until the water is much deeper.
So, have you ever actually experienced a flood? Enquiring minds want to know! 
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- People really overestimate the staying power that a car has when submerged in water. It stays perfectly in place when on a solid surface and surrounded by air, with water not so much, and it’s not the same thing just with some extra around.
- People also overestimate the pushing power that a car has against thousands of gallons of water in front of and around the car. We tend not to really connect the math and physics, which we may have learned, with a real world situation like this.
- Lastly, we might overestimating the capabilities of an engine which has its air-intake flooded or partly submerged. Combustion engines need air to combust with. If there is none available the engine cannot run. It’s just that simple.
Thus, I’d think this was lucky, could have gone sideways just as easily.
I could show you a picture of my friend in his land rover, roof deep in a river and crossing it just fine. How do you know that the driver in this case is not that person?
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I know because that person is not driving a land rover, but a car that is probably a whole tonne (or more) lighter, with a much smaller engine, that rides much lower and has no other features going for it in terms of wilderness-survival.
Of course you’d be much safer in an off-road vehicle, which is - to an extend - designed to do that kind of thing with.
In addition, even a land rover with a snorkel should not be driven ‘roof deep’ into a river. what he might be looking for is a boat.
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I’m a trained volunteer member of the Victorian SES, one of my roles is to rescue people from cars that have become stuck after driving through flood water. So yes, I have experienced working in and around flood water, I am also familiar with what happens to people and vehicles in that environment.
You aren’t taking in to account the power of moving water and its unrelenting nature, even if you can stand against it the slightest unbalancing will topple you because you don’t have room to recover, you also can’t see where you are putting your feet.
This is an example of a healthy young woman being swept away on a smooth road, the water is splashing up her leg but is probably only about 5cm deep.
I have driven through flooded streets in a 4wd, been instructed on how to create a proper bow wave, I have more training than most. I also know that flood water erodes the base of roads causing substantial holes that you can’t see, that driving through a water covered road is an absolute last resort and driving across a road with side impact waves like those in the original video is a risk I would not be willing to take even in a properly equipped vehicle.
The linked video is a vehicle sitting in water, I’m not sure what rare combination of factors you are talking about, the discussion is about a vehicle entering water. What the linked video doesn’t show is that even before the car starts completely floating you lose traction and control as weight gradually comes off.
The rest of your comments continue to show an underappreciation of the risks of flood water. In Australia sixteen people die each year drowning in flood events, nine of those from driving through flood water. Every single one of those people thought that they understood the risks, had sufficient skill and could safely drive through.
https://www.royallifesaving.com.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/16795/RLS_Floodwater_ReportLR-Exec-Summary-version-for-web.pdf
Driving through flood waters is highly risky and almost never necessary, don’t do it.
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She had God on her side:
Need more wheels drive
