REALLY?

When caught in a lightning storm, should you stay in a car or get out?

Stay in the car - but not because it has four rubber tires. The 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 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.

ActiveStyle, Pages 31 on 12/16/2013

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