Being perfectly consistent would speak to a rehearsed story. When one tells of a true anecdote from his own past the story will vary slightly.
The lightning would hit the ground, even on a level surface, because the car, with rubber tires, would be a very poor conductor. If by the rarest of chances, lightning DID hit the car every piece of wire smaller than the plug wires would probably be melted. That said:
One possible way it could be theoretically true is that the voltage regulator is bad, its unable to “see” the battery. The battery is not bad, but goes dead because it isn’t being recharged when the car is running. Lightning hits within a mile, causing the “catch” in the voltage regulator relay, to once again work. The lightning also trashes the windshield wipers and radio, thus leaving enough leftover power to restart the car.
Pretty farfetched, but, I believe, mechanically possible.
Others have put forth more logical, believable scenarios. We, who are distant in time and place have no way to know what really happened, but my money is on science.
I’m not sure that’s true, but I don’t have a cite handy.
But as I understand it, the metal radials in tires are very good conductors indeed, and are only separated from the rims and from the earth by a few milimeters of rubber. Lightning has no problem jumping small gaps of rubber.
Also, I believe the electricity would go through the frame, directly to the axles then through the rims, through the radials, and to the earth with out charging every single small wire in the car. Why would the electricity bother going through a 20 guage radio power feed when it can much easier just travel though the huge, non-restrictive frame and body? It’s been a while since I hit a car with lightning, though. (ok, never)
I’ll work on a cite, but in the mean time, consider. Lightning is looking to get to the earth as directly as possible. It’s already having to jump an air-gap, which it can do, but which is also very resistive.
The metal of a car is RIDICULOUSLY conductive compared to air. therefore, I believe that even if the tires 100% insulate the car from the earth, the lightning’s still gonna go through the car, just to minimize the resistance for that 7 feet of travel, and then can jump from the car’s frame to the earth for the last foot of travel.
Kinda like how planes are hit by lightning. They aren’t grounded, but if they find themselves in the path, they make a much “quciker” path than the air that surrounds them.
I’ll check on a cite. If anyone with some real knowlege or information about this can speak to this, I’ll be very interested.
As I understand it, lightning behaves oddly when it strikes a conductor and follows a path to ground that involves something more like skipping over the surface of the conductor than penetrating it; The paintwork is the thing most likely to be affected if a car is struck by lightning, but the discharge itself might induce currents in other conductors nearby.
Anyway you guys are making me doubt the story a tiny bit but true or not it makes a great urban legend, don’t you think?
Usually people say if it’s not consistent it’s a lie but if it is then it is more likely to be the truth…I suppose that is a different way to look at it .
It depends upon the scale of the inconsistency, I’d say - a person making up a story out of whole cloth will most likely plan it out in their head as a complete, linear and rather simple scenario, whereas real events are piled into our memory in a way that means I might not quite remember all of the events at first telling, or get their exact detail and sequence right every time.