Let's clear up the lightning/car safety issue

[kenji4life]

EVERYONE also says 'karahti' but the japanese aren't changing anything

 

[Born2bwire]

I am in EM research so I constantly here everyone say, "Gigahertz" and what not. I have only ever heard one person say jiga. That was during a seminar and he was a guest lecturer. My buddy and I almost burst out laughing and the rest of the lecture all I could think about was the line, "1.21 Jigawatts!!!!" "What the hell is a jigawatt?"

 

[Abhi]

Dont know how relavant this is .... but Top Gear (Car Show on BBC) did an experiment on this....

See it here...
Stunt: Richard is struck by lightning
http://www.topgear.com/content/timetobu...ctions/videos/16/chooseconnection.html

 

[BrownTown]

Yeah, but you see how thin that wire is, the current going thre it must be tiny, so even though the voltage is very high when it ars over the current isn't high enough to expend a huge amount of energy. I've seen pictures where high voltage arcs in substation formed with busses or transformers which can source billions of watts in fault conditions (yes, 1.21 "Jiggawatts" would be easy for them), and I highly doubt a cars thin metal exterior could save you.

 

[soccerballtux]

Number 2. It's not 1 because 1 is stupid. So the lightning just travelled what a mile? An inch of rubber isn't going to stop the lightning. If it does, it will just exit the car and jolly well make the 6 inch leap to the ground itself.

 

[DrPizza]

Incidentally (as long as this thread was already bumped), wasn't there a case within the past year where a guy riding a motorcycle was hit by lightning?

 

[Horus]

All I remember is that Top Gear espisode where Hammond gets in that Golf, and is zapped by 50 thousand watts of power...the check engine light came on, but that was about it.