Odd fact of the day: Last year some 2,000 vehicle accidents across Virginia involved utility poles — more than five accidents per day on average, according to Dominion Virginia Power.
How should you react if you struck a pole and electric wires fell onto the car? Let’s just say the life-saving response is not intuitive. Watch the video above.
— JAB
(comments below)
(comments below)
How would I react? With smoke pouring out of the dashboard?
Don’t touch the car and the ground at the same time; that’s a good rule! You don’t want to create a circuit between the car and the ground that passes through — well — you. So jump out of the car.
But that bit about current passing through your steps sounds like a lower-level concern. I’d run like hell to get away from that vehicle and the possibility of an explosion, before I’d worry that my body’s impedence is so much lower than that of the ground that any current in the ground would choose to leave it and pass through me in order to return to the ground three feet away. Through my shoes, also. And since those downed wires may be all over the place, not just resting on the car, who can say where the ground currents are going anyway?
Just saying!
I’m with Acbar. If given a choice between being burned alive in the car or possibly instantly electrocuted – I’ll take door number 2!
Now maybe I wait until my hair catches fire… 😉
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