No doubt about that. But if the interior was already filled w/water there’d be no need to break the glass. You could just open the door as there’d be no water pressure holding it shut.
But I wouldn’t want to wait for the car to fill with water. Who could guess how deep it would be or whether the car would be right side up or not when it finally filled up?
I don’t lose sleep over finding myself floating in my truck on a river but I always carry a good knife in my pocket and feel sure I could break the glass if needed.
There seems to be a lot of people that fear ending up submerged in their cars. If you’re one, no need for a hammer or swinging anything. Take a tip from car thieves and pack a spring loaded center punch. Very compact. Just press against the glass and prepare for the complete and utter reduction to glass bits the size of a pea…
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Back to defensive driving. It’s best to just keep your car out of the water in the first place.
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I agree, but It’s amazing how many people can manage to drive a perfectly good car into water.
My road is only about 1,000 feet long and there’s a fairly narrow canal the parallels it, running past my house and out into the lake. Both road and canal make a 90 degree curve at the end farthest from my house to meet the highway perpendicularly.
It’s been about 20 years now, but a woman who lives just past the canal and just off the highway, turned short of her driveway and right into the canal! We heard the commotion on our police scanner and walked down to have a look.
She was sitting on the roof of a submerged Taurus, waiting to be rescued by the volunteer fire department who arrived on the scene. When they got her out of there, another volunteer had to dive down and get her purse out of the car, before the tow truck arrived.
Since then, guardrails have been installed. We get the clowns who put their trucks through the lake ice, too, but that’s understandable to all of us who don’t drive on the lake.
CSA
+1
None of my relatives, or neighbors, or co-workers, or friends has ever wound up with their cars in the water. While I recognize vehicle submersion as a potential threat, based on how rare it is among all of the folks whom I have ever known, I think that it is a very remote threat.
As you stated, keeping your car out of the water in the first place is an excellent goal, and it is one that…probably…98-99% of the population achieves.
That being said, in my neck of the woods, last year a father and his young son died when the father failed to make a 90 degree turn in his Chevy Blazer, and they wound-up plowing straight ahead, jumping a guard rail, and plunging into the Delaware & Raritan Canal. That canal is less than 6 feet deep, but they both drowned.
I can’t quite figure out how the accident took place unless the father was driving far above the posted 35 mph speed limit, and unless he ignored the signs about the upcoming 90 degree turn. It was a tragedy, but it still mystifies me that it took place, as it was almost surely avoidable.
I had a shop teacher that was fording a stream in africa as a missionary, the volkswagon van died, and he crossed the stream with the car in gear using the starter motor.
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I owned two cars with electric retractable radio antennas. They both eventually failed from wear and tear. They’re absolutely useless. My first car was a 1977 Datsun (now Nissan) that had a manual retractable antenna that was conveniently mounted on the body column between the windshield and driver’s window. Before driving through the car wash, I simply rolled down my window and manually retracted it to prevent damage by the car wash brushes (of course, I rolled my window back up).
lol … good point. Apparently that’s easier said than done, per the posts above. Reminds me of a newspaper story I read a couple years ago. A real estate agent was driving around in the nearby town of Alameda. Alameda is an island at the edge of SF Bay. She was driving at night looking for an address, got lost, and ended up at the end of a road that terminated in a dimly lit boat ramp. You know, where you’d take your boat to put in in the water for a Sunday afternoon ride on the bay. For some reason, instead of stopping, she just drove down that ramp right into the water. She was found dead inside the car the next morning, in about 12 feet of water. The car was only about 15 feet from the water’s edge.
I remember aqua-cars. The inspiration for the Volkswagen ‘Thing’ , the kübelwagen, had an external carburetor mounted on the hood so it could drive through water.
You can take a ride in an Aqua car. The have about 7 of them at Downtown Disney in Orlando. They give rides for about $150. Funny but they are all licensed in Minnesota. Seems like that’s where the owner is. Very high maintenance. Every time they are out in the water there are about 15 different grease points that need to be greased. And they don’t go very fast. I declined.
A lot of times, when you try to make something that does everything, you end up with something that does nothing well. Like street/off road motorcycles. When you are off road, it feels like you are riding a street bike, when you are on the highway, it feels like you are on a dirt bike.
Do ANY new cars have retractable antennas anymore?
The norm nowadays seems to be a wire antenna embedded in the rear glass, or in the case of SUVs, perhaps in one of the cargo area side windows.
Between the “shark’s fin” antenna for satellite radio, and the wire antenna embedded in the glass, I don’t think that manufacturers are using retractable antennas at this point.
One important item I forgot is a autonomous collision avoidance manual override. I don’t know how well the systems are tested for all scenarios using radar and optics, but I wouldn’t want my vehicle to come to a full stop going 70mph on the expressway with a tractor trailer behind me just because a metal hubcap rolled in front of my vehicle.
I don’t see what the kubelwagen/Thing have to do with an ‘aqua car’. Are you talking about the Amphicar?
A variant of the Kubelwagen was the Schwimmerwagen
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Good to know-thanks!
The punch on my breakout tool is spring loaded. No swinging necessary.
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Yeah ampha car, aqua car, whatever they were called. A classmate had a restored one stolen out of his garage a few years ago. Said he’d put about $80,000 into it. When I talked to him last year he said he never got it back and suspected it went south but he didn’t seem to want to talk about it too much. I suspect he knows more about it.
I’m totally happy with almost everything. What’s more, my headlights were being changed not so long ago. I have to say that new headlight bulbs drive me crazy. It’s a pleasure to drive my baby at night time. Actually, I want manually operated heater / defroster controls.