Moving Dodge Pickup Struck By Lightning
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Joined: Mar 2002
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From: NH
Originally posted by lees99f150
MYTH: The rubber soles of shoes or rubber tires on a car will protect you from being struck by lightning.
FACT: Rubber-soled shoes and rubber tires provide NO protection from lightning. However, the steel frame of a hard-toped vehicle provides increased protection if you are not touching metal. Although you may be injured if lightning strikes your car, you are much safer inside a vehicle than outside.
MYTH: The rubber soles of shoes or rubber tires on a car will protect you from being struck by lightning.
FACT: Rubber-soled shoes and rubber tires provide NO protection from lightning. However, the steel frame of a hard-toped vehicle provides increased protection if you are not touching metal. Although you may be injured if lightning strikes your car, you are much safer inside a vehicle than outside.
Therefore, rubber is an insulator and always will be. However depending on thickness will depend on how much protection you will get from it as an insulator. A thin layer 1/16” will not protect you very well from 50,000 volts as would a 5/8” thick piece.
In any regards to the fact listed from the site you got it from states "FACT, the rubber soled shoes and rubber tires provide NO protection." That is false and a myth itself. They DO for a FACT provide “some” protection but it depends on the circumstances. Are they wet, how thick is the insulator etc.
If your tires are dry and the ground is dry you WILL be protected from the rubber tires from lightning and even a power line if it fell on a vehicle.
If you were to touch the hot side of a 120vac circuit with one hand and were standing in rubber sole shoes of ¼”, and your not sweating and your feet are dry and socks are dry, you will not get electrocuted because of the rubber soles in your shoes, they isolate you from ground, this is in regards to someone standing on the ground themselves and not a wood floor, or covered with some type of floor covering that is an insulator.
However if the voltage is high enough and the rubber is thin enough it can arch through. They make different thickness of rubber gloves for different voltages to provide adequate protection.
I am just addressing the false claim that rubber soled shoes and rubber tires provide NO protection, they do, but it depends on the circumstances.
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Joined: Aug 2003
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From: Susquehanna Valley, pa.
01 XLT Sport
I copied the info from the NOAA site.
this is from my memory but i was in school quite a while ago.
Electricity will flow through any thing if it has enough force (voltage), an insulator is just something with a high resistance. The best resistor (insulator) is air, so if lightning travels through a mile of air and hits your car its not the tires that save you its the cage around you directing it away. Sure tires will insulate you from power lines but they are only a few hundred volts.
i used to be a cable splicer and worked on stuff live up to 660v. anything over that would track up the outside on the gloves
I copied the info from the NOAA site.
this is from my memory but i was in school quite a while ago.
Electricity will flow through any thing if it has enough force (voltage), an insulator is just something with a high resistance. The best resistor (insulator) is air, so if lightning travels through a mile of air and hits your car its not the tires that save you its the cage around you directing it away. Sure tires will insulate you from power lines but they are only a few hundred volts.
i used to be a cable splicer and worked on stuff live up to 660v. anything over that would track up the outside on the gloves