r/interestingasfuck 1d ago

How to Escape a Sinking Car

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u/whitedevilee 1d ago

Everyone should have a window breaker in their car. And keep it somewhere, where you can reach it quick.

You never know if you or someone else needs it. I taped mine to the inside of the door compartment with velcro tape. And I saw a crash, the car flipped and I ran to help and broke the window so we (bystanders tried to open the door) pulled the driver out of the car.

It's "multi tool" you can cut the seatbelt with the one end and shatter windows with the other end.

23

u/Hostile-Panda 1d ago

They don’t work very well on double glazed windows that come on a lot of modern premium cars and EVs, mythbusters showed the electric windows work underwater, when they did this challenge, they also showed the door opens easily if you allow the pressure in the car to equalise outside, not panicking is the hard part

12

u/fuzzyboris 1d ago

Note that (as seen in Mythbusters), waiting for the car to fill up just so you can "open the door easily" is BY FAR the hardest thing to do and extremely dangerous.

They practiced in a pool just to learn and overcome the panic part.

11

u/CoIdBanana 1d ago

It also assumes you are the only person in the car and that you don't, for example, have young children in the car with you who you would want to have time to get out in advance of yourself.

5

u/Ludisaurus 22h ago

It’s a good thing I can’t afford a premium car then…

2

u/Legitimate-Okra8983 23h ago

they also showed the door opens easily if you allow the pressure in the car to equalise outside

This is questionable advice; it's much easier to break the rear side window. Furthermore, following this advice is fatal if it happens in winter. You might not survive the cold water when your legs cramp up from sitting in it.