Why is it safe to be in your car during a thunderstorm?

Answer 1

While most people believe that the reason has to do with the rubber tires, rubber being an insulator, it is not the case. In fact, air is also an insulator, however, and almost as good a one as rubber! If a lightning bolt has just travelled two or more miles through air, an inch or two of rubber will not make much difference. Indeed, it has been calculated that you would need solid tires about a mile thick to be safe!

In a car you are sitting in a metal box (this is not true in a convertible or plastic/fiberglass car, and these are notsafe). That is the source of your safety. Many people who know that it is the metal not the tires assume that the car forms a Faraday Cage, but that is also not the reason. Faraday Cages work with static electricity, lightning bolts are anything but static! The real reason is something called the skin effect.

A Faraday cage only works with static electricity (the storage spheres on top of our Van De Graaff are Faraday cages.) What happens there is that the negative charges on a Faraday cage repel each other and try to get as far away from each other as possible. The best way to do that is to occupy only the outside of the cage. Hence there is no electricity on the inside. When a lightning bolt hits, however, the electricity is not static--it is moving very rapidly! Some other effect must be at work. Lightning is an example of a very high frequency alternating current. This may seem illogical as the electricity in a lightning bolt normally only moves down, but looking at the current/time diagrams below will show that it is more like a short piece of alternating current than direct current. All electric currents generate magnetic fields that in turn can affect the current (this is the principle behind Electric Guitar pickups). In a direct current case everything is constant and so nothing seems to happen. With an alternating current, however, there is a delay in the magnetic field's response to the change in current and the 'old' magnetic field tends to push the current towards the outside of the conductor. As the frequency increases, so does the effect until at very high frequencies the entire current flows in a very narrow skin on the conductor--hence the name. In fact, not only are you safe inside the car, even the inside of the metal car BODY is safe, a fact we demonstrate by touching the inside of the cage bars while it is being struck. The outside is not safe, however, so if your hand were to go through the bars you would get struck (something that has happened to several of us at one time or another--it hurts a lot, like hitting your funny bone but about ten times worse--though the current is so low that there is no permanent damage.

Answer 2

Yep. the metal body will hopefully transfer a lightning hit around you to the ground area.

Statistically, yes. They did a test on Top Gear where they got a VW Golf and used man-made lightening to strike it (Richard Hammond was inside). Being hit by lightening in a car only really affects the electronics and that is only temporary. This is because of the shape of the car as well as the rubber tyres which do not earth the car thus, being in a car during a thunderstorm is one of the safest places to be. However, this is with the windows up, doors closed, and all of the body inside the car.

Answer 3

The metal in the car body and chassis make an excellent conductor. The dstance the car is from the ground is nominal to an arc of electricity that has just breached miles to connect with the ground.

If you were just stepping out of the car when it struck, you'd become part of the circuit, because your fluid and nerve filled body is a better conductor then the air space under the car and the rubber of the tires.

Answer 4

Because of the theory of electrostatics. Coulomb's Law tells us the charge will reside on the outside of the car. Ideally you should turn off the engine and remain inside the closed metal car without touching anything inside that is metal or in electrical contact with the outside of the car. Fiberglass bodied cars are not safe as the outside body needs to be conductive to form a Faraday cage and fiberglass is an insulator. Convertible vehicles with a cloth top will not form a complete Faraday cage either and won't be safe.

If the vehicle is struck the charge would be distributed across the conductive surface so contact should bot be made with the outside of the vehicle until it has been discharged!
Because the metal cage of the car's body will conduct the lightning around them.

Answer 5

Bcoz the car acts as a faraday cage , and some say the rubber tyres of the car insulate the lightening but i dont think so , i say ill go with the faraday cage read it on wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cag…

Answer 6

If your car is made of metal (and all cars are) then no, no, NO. Electricity, in this case lightning, is attracted to metal. However, if there is a big piece of metal about the size of your car or more on top of a house or something high, then probably yeah, sort of.

To cut a long explanation short, i basically mean that electricity is drawn to high and metal stuff. If you are in the highest altitude in the area without any metals near you the danger degree in a thunderstorm is about 9 out of 10. If you are low altitude in your car with 5 watches, 2 radios, 20 spare batteries and 3 laptops, then the danger degree is about 7 to 8 out of 10.

To cut THAT explanation short, high altitude is more dangerous than being near metal in the case of thunderstorms. If it`s a metal-attracted carnivorous killer giant slug though, that is a different matter....

Answer 7

A car, being made of metal, can act as a Faraday cage. If the vehicle is hit by lightning the electricity flows through the metal parts of the car rather than through its occupants.

Answer 8

When you are in a car during a thunderstorm the rubber on the wheels protect you from the storm.