When caught in a lightning storm, should you stay in a car or get out?
Stay in the car — but not necessarily for the
reason you may think. The four rubber tires of a car provide no
insulating protection, most authorities agree.
Instead, the National Lightning Safety Institute advises,
it is the conductive nature of a mostly metal vehicle that actually
offers the best chance of protection from lightning. Most of the
current is carried on the outside of a conducting object. This
phenomenon is called the skin effect, and the protective shield is
sometimes referred to as a partial Faraday cage (named for the English scientist Michael Faraday, who developed shielding based on the effect).
So the best advice for a driver in a lightning storm is not only to
stay within this protective perimeter, but to make sure not to touch
any conductive object that might penetrate outside it, like door and
window handles, the radio dial, the gearshift or the steering wheel. A
school bus is the type of vehicle likely to offer the most protection,
the institute says.
Lightning is capricious, and many variables — among them whether the
vehicle is wet or dry, metal or fiberglass, a hardtop or a convertible
— can have an unpredictable effect on what happens to a car and its
passengers.
Posted By Sameera Chathuranga
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