Two state troopers are lucky to be alive today after their vehicles were struck by lightning, police say.
Initial reports at the scene indicate that at approximately 2:13 p.m., two troopers were sitting in their patrol vehicles at a construction site (one trooper in each vehicle) on the Garden State Parkway southbound in Middle Township at mile marker 10.9, when both vehicles were struck by lightning.
Neither trooper sustained serious injuries.
One trooper was taken AC Medical Center in Pamona for observation. The other trooper did not require any medical attention.
[TLS]
G-D was getting them for writing tickets. – Just kidding.
The safest place to be in a lightning storm is in a car. The tires, which are rubber, don’t conduct electricity, and prevent the car from being grounded.
(Just some science I remember from high school.)
all cars today are made to withstand getting struck by lightning its one of the tests they put the car through today!!! the body is meant to divert the shock around the frame and not trhugh it….
Some people may think that the rubber tires on a car help to protect a driver and occupants from a lightning strike, but this is a myth.
It is what’s sitting on top of the tires that makes the difference.
A fully-enclosed, all-metal vehicle is very safe, but don’t touch interior metallic areas on a vehicle, Richard Kithil, president of the National Lightning Safety Institute, said.
The lightning charge goes around the outside of the vehicle, creating a Faraday effect and protecting the occupants inside.
Fiberglass vehicles, convertibles or a vehicle with windows open, however, help defeat the fully enclosed objective, Kithil said.
So far in 2014, 7 people have been killed by lightning. One man was struck and killed while riding a motorcycle on May 22, and another was closing car windows as he was fatally struck on May 14.
Lightning strikes as a much-needed rain storm comes to Lake Powell which is marked by a 100-foot thick ‘bathtub ring’ of bleached sandstone, the result of a six-year drought that has dramatically dropped the level of the reservoir, on March 24, 2007 near Page, Arizona.
The National Lightning Safety Institute suggests safely pulling off to the side of the road, waiting out the storm, turning off the engine, putting one’s hands in one’s lap and not touching inside items such as door and window handles, steering wheels and gear shifts. Heavy equipment such as bulldozers and backhoes with rollover canopies are safe during thunderstorms, but riding mowers and golf carts are not.
While a car provides some protection from lightning, as the metal frame directs lightning currents to the ground, vehicles can still be damaged by a strike. Lightning damage to a vehicle includes pitting, arcing and burning along with electrical system issues, the institute said.
Wow a bunch of Princeton Grads here!! Masters in tires
Close call, glad they’re ok