| Hi, if you're reading this, it means you are not logged in. For all visitors.... please feel free to look at the threads. Since we are so slow at the moment the board has been condensed. If you would like to add your own 2 cents, please register.. or log in. Trouble in registering, please send an email to: xray62@gmail.com Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
| How to get out of a sinking car; advice | |
|---|---|
| Topic Started: Nov 4 2009, 03:19 PM (26 Views) | |
| xray | Nov 4 2009, 03:19 PM Post #1 |
Administrator
|
Although there is a news item in the article, this piece is about saving yourself in case you find yourself in a car that is sinking in water. We all should remember the advice....  ________________________________________________________________________________________________ How to get out of a sinking car  An image from a 2006 research paper by Gordon Giesbrecht and G.K. McDonald. COURTESY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA November 04, 2009 Toronto Star When their Jeep rolled into a 3-metre-deep pond hidden by high grass, three North Dakota college students made a tragic mistake. "When your vehicle hits the water, you have about a one-minute window to get out," said Gordon Giesbrecht. "You should never touch your cellphone." The North Dakota trio – including 21-year-old Brandon, Manitoba native Ashley Neufeld – made a pair of panicked calls to a friend on Sunday night as their car was sinking. Searchers found the vehicle, wheels up and fully submerged, on Tuesday. "Before you know it, you're under water, you're panicking and your odds of survival are very, very low," said Giesbrecht. There's a great deal of advice in survival manuals and on the Internet about what to do if your vehicle ends up in the water. Only Giesbrecht, a professor of kinesiology at the Univeristy of Manitoba, has studied the matter. In his 2006 paper, Automobile Submersion: Lessons in Vehicle Escape, Giesbrecht reports that 400 North Americans die each year in sunken cars. In 1997, according to Transport Canada, 56 Canadians drowned in their cars – ten per cent of all accidental drownings that year. Giesbrecht tested controlled sinking scenarios with volunteers attempting to escape a variety of vehicles using different strategies. "Bottom line, you have to remember four words," Giesbrecht said. "Seatbelts. Children. Windows. Out." All the vehicles in Giesbrecht's study floated before they sank. Float times varied between 30 seconds and two minutes. Giesbrecht advises you use this time to first undo your own seatbelt, undo those of any children in the vehicle, open the driver-side window and escape, first pushing children out ahead of you. Your car's electrical system should work for up to three minutes in the water. But once the water reaches the bottom of your window frames, pressure makes them increasingly difficult to open, even with a manual crank. Volunteers who used the S-C-W-O. strategy escaped "alive" more than 50 per cent of the time in the study. In one instance, three adults and a child were all able to escape out of the driver's side window in 51 seconds. Many TV shows and rescue experts suggest that you wait for the car to fill with water, then open the doors to escape. That strategy worked just over 30 per cent of the time. Giesbrecht strongly advises against it, since opening the doors guarantees that your car will fill with water and sink like a stone. Breathing from a bubble of trapped air, kicking out a window or waiting until the car touched bottom all yielded a less than 10 per cent survival rate. For total peace of mind, Giesbrecht recommends buying a centre-punch device, like a $10 RES-Q-ME tool, which can be used to shatter windows and cut seatbelts. "I keep one hanging from my rear view mirror," said Giesbrecht. "In an emergency, you're not going to remember to find it in the glove compartment. It has to be right in front of you. You should presume that you will panic." |
 |
 
|
| Beancounter | Nov 5 2009, 12:45 AM Post #2 |
|
My first reaction would be to "OPEN THE DOOR." Common sense tells you that the water pressure will keep it closed once you are submerged. If it is too late already my second choice would be to open the window. Hope it never happens. My eyes are not good enough any more to drive in the dark, unless it is a very short distance on roads I know. IF we drive after dark, my wife does it, her eyes are a lot better than mine. (More than half a century ago my eyes were perfect, the moment I saw her I knew: "She is a 'keeper,' one to grow old with." The rest is history). |
|
|
|
| Bruce | Nov 5 2009, 11:38 AM Post #3 |
|
The papers say they were stargazing, what ever that means. But the car was found in 3 meters of water which means it was aways from the shoreline. They must have been booting her pretty good and driving around with their lights out. |
|
|
|
| ReallyOrnery | Nov 6 2009, 02:28 AM Post #4 |
|
xray: When I worked for the California Department of Corrections, the official technique to escape a vehicle in water was to roll down a window and swim to safety. That worked well for staff, but it left inmates still handcuffed in a locked cage in the vehicle's passenger compartment. Lucky for the Department (and inmates), we never had a vehicle submerged in a body of water -- yet. I know Giesbrecht recommends buying a centre-punch device, like a $10 RES-Q-ME tool, which can be used to shatter windows and cut seatbelts. However, once you vehicle is submerged, do not break the window with such such device! The water pressue will force the glass into your face and neck, which could cause you to bleed to death. Instead, take a deep breath, roll down the window and swim to safety. RO |
|
|
|
| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous) | |
| « Previous Topic · The Easy Chair · Next Topic » |
8:30 PM Nov 30
