Car STARTs after being hit with lightning!!! (No Links)

In My Humble Opinion
1

I am going to tell you a quick anecdote that someone repeated to me many times that I personally believe is true but I think most other people I know think it is either complete crap or exaggerated. All I need is some Dopers to do is say “Yes, it’s true” or “No, it’s crap”, of course you may elaborate on your answer.
It’s not a story form joke.

This guy that I know told me that a few years ago he was driving on a highway and the weather was really bad because there was a storm going on. He had his kids in the backseat and was trying to make it home as quickly as possible and he turns on his brights and his battery goes out.
He had been having battery trouble but had put off buying a new battery and was regretting it, so the guy STARTed trying to comfort his 2 young kids and tell them that everything would be OK.
The thunder and lightning were so severe that it was scaring the kids and there was no way that he was going to get out and walk.
The guy prayed “please get me out of this Lord” and about 10 seconds later lightning struck the car and it was able to START up again. The guy drove home and took the money he was going to buy a car battery with and gave it to a local church and that car battery that was “no good” lasted another year.

I believe it because this person tells the same story the same way to everybody and it’s always so consistent.

The story teller in question is not known to be a liar.

At the very least I know he believes it happened.

2

eh. I call BS.

I believe all electronics run off the engine(alternator) when the engine is running. Has pretty much nothing to do with the battery. If the alternator was bad as soon as the battery goes does you wouldn’t be able to start up the car again. It wouldn’t be an intermittant problem it should be dead period. Thus the car shouldn’t have been able to run for another year.

I could be dead wrong, but as I understand it thats how it works. Therefore this story doesn’t make any sense to me.

3

So God started the car with a bolt of lightning? I call BS too because ‘in my opinion’ (and I believe also ‘in fact’) there is no evidence that any such “God” exists who could do such a thing.

4

Disclaimer: I have no idea whether any/all/none of the events described in the story are factually true and to what extent; I also have no objective method of discerning their truth.

Lets break it down:
This guy that I know told me that a few years ago he was driving on a highway and the weather was really bad because there was a storm going on.
Q:Is it possible to drive on a highway, during a storm? Yes, it is.

He had his kids in the backseat and was trying to make it home as quickly as possible and he turns on his brights and his battery goes out.
Q: Is it possible to put kids in a car? A:Yes.
Q:Is it possible for a car to malfunction in this way? A: Dunno, maybe - sounds to me like a blown fuse, but I’m no expert.

He had been having battery trouble but had put off buying a new battery and was regretting it, so the guy STARTed trying to comfort his 2 young kids and tell them that everything would be OK.
No problems here

The thunder and lightning were so severe that it was scaring the kids and there was no way that he was going to get out and walk.
The guy prayed "please get me out of this Lord"
All of this is possible

and about 10 seconds later lightning struck the car
This isn’t impossible - lightning is a real phenomenon.

and it was able to START up again.
Maybe… does this have to be the result of the lightning?

The guy drove home and took the money he was going to buy a car battery with and gave it to a local church
Sure, whatever.

and that car battery that was “no good” lasted another year.
Do we even know for sure that the battery was the faulty component?

So… Pretty much all of the individual parts of the story are at least possible, in that they don’t violate causality or spacetime, but the way the whole thing hangs together doesn’t exactly lend an air of plausibility to it; maybe your friend should (assuming he eventially scrapped the vehicle) have cut out and kept the section of bodywork damaged by the lightning (there was one, right?) I would have done.

We could speculate on any number of naturalistic methods by which a car could apparently die then come back to life, with or without the intervention of fortuitous lightning, but really, what’s the point? The Guy has his anecdote; he may or may not be telling the truth, to some variable degree; if he’s telling the truth, the events he described may or may not not be causally linked in the way he believes them to be.

There’s no particular reason for third parties to come to any firm conclusion about his story.

5

Color me dubious. Lightning is high in voltage and amperage but short in duration. A lead acid battery hit by lightning might explode but it wouldn’t have time to recharge to any noticeable degree. However it is conceivable that by some one in a gazillion chance that badly corroded battery terminals might have gotten cleaned by a high enough voltage. And I’d be rather surprised to find a car actually working if it’s electronic system had been hit by lightning – the alternator contains solid state voltage regulators and modern cars contain various kinds of computers and sensors, none of which are going to be improved by tens of thousands of volts.

Other elements of the story don’t really ring true. Even if the car is stalled and the kids are scared, most adults don’t pray “Get me out of this” in a thunderstorm. Most severe thunderstorms only last ten or twenty minutes and then pass on, and most adults know this. And a car is a pretty safe place to be in a storm. It’s just not that big a deal. Also, if the kids were scared of lightning, then having a lightning bolt actually * hit * the car would result in the kind of cleaning job that no one would be grateful for, if you know what I mean.

6

So, the guy is trapped in a car with two kids who are scared of lightning. What does God do?

*Hit the car with a lightning bolt!
*
Way to go, God! Suffer the little children!

7

I didn’t know God worked for AAA.

8

A few years ago the BBC ran a series of programmes where they put a professional stunt-man into simulated extreme weather conditions , such as very high winds and floods to see how he would cope. One of the programmes dealt with lightening and the effect of being in side a car. They placed a car under an artificial lightening machine used for testing the insulators of high voltage transmission lines. They then bombarded the car with lightening ( with the stunt man in it ) to see what would happen to the man and the car. The man was unharmed and the only thing that happened to the car was that the rear windscreen wiper started operating on its own. So lightening will have some effect on car electrics.

9

Is the story true? I dunno. I highly, HIGHLY doubt the cause/effect relationship of lightning starting a car battery.

The thing I don’t get is, why did the car stop? I can take the battery out of my car (a 1999 Toyota camry) while the engine is running and it keeps on going. At that point, the car is generating all the electricity it needs to keep the motor lit, and to operate the electrics of the car. So why would a bad battery leave him stranded?

I’m sure something happened to this man, and I’m sure that to him, as he tells the story, it is very real. But I also know when I believed in God, I was VERY likely to ascribe any behavior that didn’t immediatley make sense to me to him. When my car overheated, and then quickly cooled after I prayed, I felt his touch. I told that story with gusto, and believed he had something to do with it.

True, I also added a gallon of water that I kept in my trunk to the radiator…but MAN that needle moved so quickly, the car got so cool so fast, it HAD to be something there.

So I told the story, over and over (always leaving out the part with the water) and it made me feel special to think God played a part. And it made people treat me with respect to my story.

But there was no God that day. The car cooled because I gave it some water. I didn’t at the time believe a gallon could do that much…but it did. And I now better understand the laws of thermodynamics, and why the car cooled that quickly.

I’m not saying your fellow is intentionally bending the story to make it a good “Church Story.” I’m saying that in that setting, it is REALLY fun to have a good story, and it made me believe my stories more when other people reacted positively to them.

I don’t think that what happened is the story we’re getting. I don’t think the car would have stopped because the battery died. I don’t think the car spontaneously started (meaning, the fellow didn’t even turn the key) just cause of a lightning strike.

And I KNOW that I’ve had as many “miraculous moments” since I stopped believing in god as I did when I did believe in him. I’m just much more likely to question the science behind them now, and not accept that my car got better cause a man in the clouds deemed it so.

I’m not saying I don’t believe your friend’s story. I’m saying I don’t think any of us (including him) really know what happened that day, and whether or not it was intervention of a divine power.

I will say, there are other parts of the story that don’t ring true.

Steve

10

Why would this STOP the the car? The engine only requires the battery to drive the STARTer motor. After that the condition of the battery doesn’t matter. The worse that’s going to happen is the headlights might be dim.

Seems like this guy couldn’t learn his lesson. He was risking “disaster” (a rain storm! The humanity!) by not replacing his battery and god helps him out of a bad situation of his own making. So what does he do? Continues risking the battery dying on him. I think god would have been better teaching him a lesson and making him walk in the rain. Some people never learn the easy way.

But, to look at it from a more realistic manner. What’s more likely is that the heavy rain and damp got into the cars electrics/engine, causing it to stall. The driver blames the battery, which he suspects is no good. At some point, through persistance, the car fires back up again. The driver equates this to what may or may not have been a lightning strike. A year later, and totally unrelated, the battery need to be replaced.

11

Correlation does not prove causation.

12

I’ve nothing to add that is of value to the OP, and I can’t find the “Ask a Doper whatever” thread at the moment, so I hope you’ll pardon me for the hijack (which I intend to be brief):

I may have missed a prior explanation—and, if so, I apologize—but I’m benignly curious as to the significance of your practice of capitalizing the word “start” where it occurs within one of your posts, i.e., “I was STARTled by the sudden report”, “He STARTed in with his crap, much to my dismay”, and like that?

13

This explanation makes sense to me. I’ve had similar problems when driving down the road to my office after a heavy rainstorm. A dead battery would prevent you from starting a car, but it wouldn’t stop a car from running.

My first thought after reading the OP is that we should send this to Mythbusters. If nothing else, we’d get to see Adam and Jamie play with lightning.

14

His name is START. I just think it’s a stylistic thing. I like it, anyway.

15

Well, the only problem with that explanation is it accounts for almost all of the evidence and makes too much sense. We are supposed to nitpick each detail one by one for a few hundred posts until people start getting death threats.

I can expand a little. Heavy thunderstorms can obviously cause water to accumulate on the road. That heavy water spray can cause the lights to dim on some cars and the dashboard electronics to go all screwy. I have had it happen many times and I am picturing his car as not exactly pristine condition so that is certainly possible. If the water got deeper, it could also block the exhaust or cause some other problem and cause it to die. It probably wouldn’t start back up right away. A lightning strike could hit very nearby and make him think that it hit the car. Enough time may have passed by then that they water had drained away from the problem parts.

16

A few questions of my own-keeping in mind I know NOTHING about cars:

Couldn’t having your car hit by lightening be kind of dangerous?

And second, why the HELL didn’t he buy a new battery? The way I was brought up (Catholic, mind you), you don’t tempt God by saying, “Oh, I’ll donate the money to church-I don’t need a battery!” You come prepared.

Now, I could see some of the Sisters telling us a story like that, that God got him through it-but they would never say you should give money you spend on NECESSITIES to the church instead. (They MIGHT say to the poor, but not to the church).

17

What he said. dias eh tahW

18

Whilst the START thing is a rather quirky and charming affectation, you should be careful where you use it; on my first reading of the account, I took the capitalisation to be some kind of subtle hint that the man in the story was actually yourself; you know, like those posts “I have a FRIEND who is worried about the size of his penis…”

19

Je comprends exactement ce que voulez dire vous, j’ai été inquiété à ce sujet aussi. Si tout va bien maintenant la plupart des personnes sont employées à la capitalisation du mot START.

20

Je ne suis pas français et je ne parle pas avec compétence la langue française.