Prius destroyed by lightning on hwy

shocking!

 

I actually was over at a friend of a friends house and their car got hit by lightening in Tampa, FL (prior lightning capital of the world). Just made a 2500 mile trip in several states with their brand new GMC yukon and when driving down the road at highway speeds during a storm, the lightning bang happened and ended up frying 17 different computer systems. They were able to steer the car to a stop on the shoulder as they lost all power. They were ok, no ill effects, but their antenna was melted on top of the car. They couldn't even unlock the doors and had to call a wrecker. They decided to trade it in and take the hit in fear of other unfound issues after the car was struck. Hope this never happens to me! I would be all shook up as well.

 

Sweet bike C-man.

 

I am actually surprised that a car can be hit by a lighting bolt in the first place.

Cars are on rubber wheels and are therefore very well insulated from the ground. So a lighting will form with something else in the vicinity that offers far less electrical resistance.
And even if you are hit, you need a pointy metal thing to enable that. The new Prius doesn't have any pointy metal things to attract lighting. And the sharkfin antenna is round and made of plastic (otherwise the antennas inside would not be able to transmit).

So I wonder how the Prius mentioned above could be struck and where exactly on the chassis.

And *if* you are struck, the car is a Faraday cage, so I don't get it how the electronics in it can get fried - likely via the "ground" connection.
Never heard of cars struck by lighting here in EU. Well, at least they never talked about it on the news. And we do get lighting storms...

 

Good point Pakitt, I can tell you in Florida, cars do get hit and sometimes, even blow out the tires, at least from what I saw on the news channels. Lightning can and will hit anything, and is attracted to metal. Anything higher than ground level is a target. I used to work for a cable company and even though lightning is supposed to take the shortest path, it can go thru electrical lines, telephone lines, and cable lines. I imagine thats how it blew out the car computers. Your car chasis is connected to the battery, so therefore everything electrical would have been jolted potentially with a lot of voltage.

 

Well, at least in any case better to be inside a car when a lighting strucks. Because even if it destroys the electronics it doesn't kill you (unless you have an accident, that is), due to the Faraday cage effect, you are safe and sound inside it.

 

True - I'd rather be IN the car than near it.

I'd wonder if the Faraday Cage effect would only totally apply if the car was totally enclosed, but the Prius isn't strictly an enclosure - the glass (assuming windows were closed) and sunroof if equipped could potentially provide disruptions to the Faraday Cage effect.
Lightning is strange, though - it will run horizontally, or zig-zag. I had a close shave 6yrs ago, I was walking on the sidewalk in front of my house with a storm threatening on the horizon, only partial cloud cover, and felt my hair stand on end, simultaneously heard a zzzzzzz along the power lines above, then 30-40 metres away a deafening BANG as a lightning bolt hit a tree behind my home.
We had a power switchboard at work mounted about a metre from the ground - the lightning thought it was quicker to go via the switchboard (parts of which landed 60 feet away) than direct to earth. Soon after, a tree was hit (which exploded spectacularly), which I would have thought would be higher resistance than direct to earth.

 

I doubt the tires are a factor in a lightning strike. The bolt basically has a choice, it can either go through about 4 feet of air, or go through the highly conductive car body and then through the 6 inches or so of air under the car.

Years ago the house I lived in was struck by lightning. Two outlets in my bedroom had their plastic covers blown off. On one, the wallpaper was blown off the wall between the outlet and the radiator connected to the furnace. The other outlet was where my clock radio was plugged in. The plug was scorched, and the wire had a short section vaporized where it hung against the radiator. After fixing the cord, the clock still worked. The TV downstairs still worked, but the colors were wrong on one corner of the screen (magnetized by the strike?). The only confirmed casualty was the phone and answering machine on the far side of the house.

 

if you feel your hair stand on end, quickly squat down making as small a ball as possible and get on the balls of your feet instead of flat feet...


iPhone ?

 

Thanks, I'll remember that if it happens again - hopefully, I won't have that experience again though - but, I was obviously running one minute too late.

 

The Prius battery cannot attract anything more than any other part in the car. It is inside a metal case. Which is a Faraday cage in itself and it is inside the car chassis, another Faraday cage. No way.

 

it attracts me. and my wife calls me lightning.

 

Couple things, while the car's body will protect you from lightning it doesn't mean the car's computer and electronics are protected. Computers and any transistorized electronics are sensitive to electrical impulses. Even a nearby lightning bolt can induct enough voltage to cause damage to electronics nearby. The "induction" is the problem, this is what is fries the computers in cars when they're struck by lightning.

Cars can and do get struck by lightning, sometimes nothing happens, other times the car is totaled. Have to keep in mind we're dealing with millions and million of volts with a payload in the millions of amperes all which occurs in a fraction of a second. So the effects are often all across the board.

 

If the spark can jump across the 10,000+ feet of air insulation above, then the additional 4 inches of air below is little impediment.

Few natural lightning targets are metal. Many aren't even pointy, e.g. the ground and lake surfaces. Lightning can even snake its way around pointy treetops and hit ground targets very close to the tree base.

Even when metal aircraft are hit, it can be on smooth rounded portions of the wing or fuselage, not necessarily on pointy protrusions.

That cage is not a superconductor, it has non-zero electrical resistance. When you hit an 0.1 ohm resistance with 10,000 amps, the resulting end-to-end voltages across the ground loops are still high enough to fry much of the car's electronics. Throw in the inductance too, even a superconducting chassis can have enough impedance for the sudden spark fry that stuff. Then add in the mutual inductance, i.e. transformer action, nearby items are also toasted.

It happens frequently here in the U.S. It isn't news unless something catastrophic happens, or someone gets video of the actual strike.

More important than the balls of your feet: keep your feet close together. Ground current from a nearby strike will likely produce a voltage gradient between your feet. The more widely spaced your feet, the higher the voltage. This is part of the reason cattle are more susceptible to nearby strikes than are humans.
Hundreds of reindeer killed by lightning in Norway | IceNews - Daily News

No more than an inert block of metal of the same size and shape.

 

I think I would be thrown out at a physics/electronics exam....
Thanks for all the clarifications!

 

I would think the burst of EMF alone, generated by a lightning bolt within a few feet, would be enough to knock out most electronics.

 

Electronics using valves was in it's infancy - and out of scope for study - when I studied physics at school.

BUT - I'm cool with Flux Capacitors when they arrive. Though I wonder how they might affect nearby cars.

 

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