Be informed: How to drive through flooded streets.

Here is a piece we found online JUST IN CASE you find yourselves in floodwaters (we hope not).

This is from No Nonsense Blog.

So here are our top 10 tips on driving through a flood:

1. The most obvious piece of advice is to avoid flooded areas if at all possible. Change your route or don’t leave home unless absolutely necessary.

2. Don’t drive through flood water if you are unsure of its depth. Cars can float in as little two feet of water. As a rule, if the water is above the bottom of your doors consider turning around.

3. Try and drive at the highest point of the road if you can do so safely. Often this will be the middle of the road as the waters can tend to be deeper along the curbs.

4. Never drive through a flood if there are vehicles coming the other way since as the waves coming from their movement could flood your engine.

5. Drive slowly and steadily creating only a small bow wave in front of you. Driving faster does not mean you get through faster as you may drive water into your engine and do some serious damage.

6. Drive in a low gear, keeping the revs high. Water in the exhaust can stall the engine.

7. Don’t forget that in low levels of water your braking distance is greatly extended, so drive at a speed that you know you can stop safely in case you need to.

8. Test your brakes once you pass through the flood as soon as it is safe to do so, i.e. when there are no cars immediately behind you.

9. Have your mobile with you and ensure you have your emergency numbers at hand, such as your breakdown assistance number.

10. Make sure you have spare warm clothing with you, just in case you need to leave your car.

There. Let us all be informed (not making fun of anyone here but this IS really our vision) and also pass this on to our friends so that everyone will be safe and dry when rains invade us again.

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No Responses

  1. Anonymous says:

    Before driving into the floodwater look if the sidewalk is still visible and try to gauge how deep the water is from that, of if there is an island in the middle of the road you can try to gauge it for that too.

  2. Anonymous says:

    check vehicles passing through the flood. if water is higher than half of their tires, then it is dangerous to pass through