Is your car really the safest place to be in an electrical storm? Are you considered grounded while in a car or not? Sorry if this has been asked before, I searched, but not all 8,000 pages. 
Electricity likes to follow the path of least resistance so if it struck the car it would travel through the frame and to the ground and you would be fine I think.
Yes, you’re safe inside a car, not because of the rubber tires, but because the metal shell of the vehicle will conduct the current around you and out the bottom to ground.
Yes, but the “I think” part is also why I posed the question as well. 
Look into “Farraday Cage”. (sp?) Electricity flows around the outside of conductors, or something like that.
Dang whippersnapper kids cutting across my lawn!
Cars act as a Faraday cage and so all electricity flows along the outside, keeping you safe inside. The same situation applies if, say, a power line falls over on top of your car. Don’t get out of the car until you’re sure the power’s off, otherwise the second you set foot on the ground, you’re in for quite a shock!
I would just like to applaud you all on the serendipitous timing of this thread. We’ve got a thunderstorm brewing up over here, and I’ve got to go to work soon and do lots of driving around in it. It’s nice to know that I probably won’t die tonight.
What if you’ve got your windows down and lightning hits your car? Would protruding bits get zapped?
Lots of cars now have earth straps dangling underneath. Does not impact lightning (that sucker is getting to earth with or without the car in the way), but if a live cable is draped across it, the earth strap will help drop the current to earth.
Si
Faraday (one R), but yes you’ve got the right idea. Electricity flows around the outside of a metal box leaving the inside untouched. It also works in reverse. Whatever is on the outside stays on the outside, and whatever is on the inside stays on the inside. A home computer’s case is made of metal because it also acts like a Faraday cage, keeping the radio waves generated by the computer inside the box so that they don’t interfere with your TV and cell phone.
Cars (and computer cases) aren’t perfect Faraday cages because they have holes in them. Let’s face it though, a car without any holes in it would be difficult to drive since you wouldn’t be able to see out of it. It’s not impossible for lightning to get into the interior of a car. In the few cases I’ve seen pics of, the lightning has come in through the front window.
Whether it’s a perfect Faraday cage or not, it’s still a heck of a lot safer than being outside. I’ve seen video of a car being struck by lightning. The guys inside the car likely needed a change of underwear, but were otherwise unharmed.
Having the windows up or down isn’t going to make much of a difference, but why would you have your windows down during a thunderstorm when it’s raining? If you stick your hand out the window and point your finger up in the air you will be slightly more likely to be struck by lightning, and the lightning will be more likely to hit your hand first instead of the car. If the lightning does hit your hand you will probably lose your arm, if you aren’t killed outright.
There’s a myth that cars never get struck by lightning because the tires insulate them. That’s not true. In fact, here’s some pics of cars that have been struck by lightning: http://www.lightningsafety.com/nlsi_pls/vehicle_strike.html
There’s also a misunderstanding about lightning following the path of least resistance, as if all of the energy will go down one path and nowhere else. While electricity does in general follow the path of least resistance, it’s also true that if there are two paths and one is more resistive than the other, electricity will flow down BOTH, although more current will flow down the path with the lesser resistance.
Power lines usually have things called “reclosers” on them. If you plug in too many things at once, you can blow the breaker in your house. Then you have to go all the way down into the basement and flip it back on. The same thing happens with power lines. If there’s some sort of fault, they would have to send someone out in the truck to reset the circuit. Since most faults are temporary (like wind blowing the lines up against a tree) the power company uses reclosers to automatically turn the line back on, kinda like if you had a little imaginary person down by your breaker box in the basement who would automatically flip the breaker back on any time you overloaded it. Reclosers typically will try a couple of times fairly quickly to reconnect the line. Ever had your lights go out and come back on a couple seconds later? There was some sort of fault on the line and the recloser turned it back on.
The reclosers aren’t going to keep trying again forever. They will typically try again a couple of times fairly quickly (within a few seconds), then will try again once or twice after some time has passed, maybe a minute or two. This is the dangerous part, and is why you shouldn’t get out of your car even if you are sure there’s no electricity in the lines, because a minute or two later, the recloser might just turn power back on to the lines. If you are standing around thinking that the line is completely dead, you could be seriously hurt when the recloser turns it back on.
That site talks about ‘hands on lap’ being safe, which makes sense. However your feet are still on the floor, no? I’m guessing the carpet on the floor isn’t a lot of protection. So do you sit cross-legged on the seat? Hang your legs over the back of the seat?
In my case, it’s a job requirement. I’m a carrier for a newspaper distributor and unfortunately, we don’t get to take the night off because of a little thunder, lightening or torrential rain. I’ve delivered in three tropical storms so far, and I’m sure I’ll get a couple more under my belt this summer. I’d guess mail carriers and Fed-Ex/UPS guys would have the same problem; I’ve seen lots of UPS trucks that don’t even have a driver’s side door.
Note to self: Stop flipping off the thunder gods.
The idea is to minimize the risk of an electrical path through your heart or head. If your feet are on the floor and you aren’t touching anything else, there isn’t any (easy) path through those vital areas.
I know of cases where lighting took out all the onboard electronics, so the results that Top Gear got are not guaranteed.