I understand why cars give you shocks when you get out and close the door, but lately my car has been giving me REALLY BAD shocks. It’s not even winter yet. I’m to the point where I’ll get out and try very carefully to shut the door by only pushing on the window, but sometimes I’ll get a shock on the back of my calf (through my pants) if it touches the car on the way out. OR sometimes I’ll successfully get out with out getting a shock and when I get back in (carefully) and go to pull the door shut my finger will touch a screw and get a shock. So anyways…The question is, what is causing these shocks to be so much worse then usual? I’m almost wondering if it’s some sort of electical problem with the car.
I doubt it’s related to the car’s electrical system. What you describe is a significant buildup of static electricity. I don’t know much about the cause (although tires pop to mind–are they new?), but you should be able to eliminate the shocks by having a ground strap from the car’s body dragging lightly on the ground.
I also get shocked when I get out of the car, but not as bad as you are describing.
I am overweight. Do you think overweight people cause more friction getting out of the car?
The thin people need to answer.
On the way out of the car and while still seated, grab the frame of the door and stand up. This will discharge any static you have built up.
It does sound like static to me, my shocks are pretty severe too. I’ve taken to tightly gripping the metal of the key, and grounding myself as I get out against the door latch. The spark leaves the key instead of my skin and doesn’t hurt as much.
Another trick I’ve been told of is to spray the seats with Static Guard, though I haven’t tried that myself.
CAR DOORS AND “STATIC” SHOCKS
http://amasci.com/emotor/zapped.html
You build up a large charge on your butt and back when sitting in your car (and an opposite charge builds up on the surface of the car seat.) However, since the opposite charges are so close together, you can’t get shocked. However, when you climb out of the car, you pull the opposite charges a great distance apart, and this creates a high voltage.
One solution: after climbing out of the car, firmly grasp a metal object (such as car keys or a large coin) and then touch the object to the metal part of the car. A spark will leap, but the white-hot painful part of the spark will be on the metal, not on your delicate skin. This however creates a large pulse of electric current in your arm, and you might feel a slight twitch as this electric signal tells your muscles to contract.
Better solution: before rizing from the seat, grab hold of the metal car and don’t let go. (Grabbing the door frame is good.) Then, as you rise from the seat, no high voltage appears on your body (and a tiny electric current flows through your hand and into the metal car.) Once you have stepped out of the car you can let go. There’s only one down side to this: if you have kids or wise-ass friends, they can climb out of the car WITHOUT grabbing metal, then, while you’re still holding the car, they can touch you with their car keys, thus generating an extremely nasty spark!
Another solution: try different kinds of clothing, or buy cloth seatcovers. Some surfaces are much more “staticky” than others.
It definitely has nothing to do with your car’s electrical system. Its static electricity.
How big of a shock you get depends on a lot of things, such as the temperature and humidity, what kind of upolstery your car’s seats have, and what kind of clothes you’re wearing.
Bolt a steel cable or length of chain somewhere to the car’s frame so it drags on the ground. That will discharge the static electricity generated in the car’s frame. You can probably get a garage to install it for you - tell them you need a static grounding strap put in.
Are you serious? Couldn’t that cause sparks and possibly ignite gas fumes?
Anyway, I’m not trying to rub it in or anything, but my Mazda MX-3 has a little button thingy (although it doesn’t press in or anything) on the door that says quite simply “touch.” After reading the owners manual, I discovered that this is to touch before exitting the vehicle in order to discharge static electricity. I don’t use it often since I’m in hot & humid South Florida, but it’s nice to know it’s there. People getting in my car always ask me why the heck they should “touch”’ that button on their door, actually I think that’s how I first noticed it.
There isn’t going to be a concentration of gas fumes remotely approaching a danger point under the same conditions where a spark of any significance would be generated.
It’s the same principle as rubbing your shoes on a carpet and touching a doorknob. This is a simple static buildup problem. It can be between you and the seat, but more often it’s between the car itself and the ground. Many of the newer “low rolling resistance” tires are made from a sort of rubber that seems be surprisingly good at picking up charges from asphault and keeping them on the car.
Those ground straps aren’t serious spark hazards. Fuel trucks used to be required to use grounding chains to prevent sparks. However, they may have been made from some sort of nonsparking copper. There’s a sort of rubberized ground strap I’ve seen before, usually on rusted out old cars in northern Ohio.
The problem is not going to be fixed by grounding the vehicle to an earth ground. I already tried that and it did not work. My problem was a high resistance between the seat and the rest of the body and chassis. I grounded the seat bottom and seat back (the fabric parts) to the lower seat frame and then grounded the seat frame to the body. I also discover the plastic door panel was also a large source of static electricity and grounded it to the door. To prevent static damage (ESDS to airplane folks) on commercial airplanes, anything using metal as part of the assembly is grounded. We measure resistance down to .1 milliohms (.0001), I have damaged airplane electrical parts with static electricity.