Flooding

[Lurker]

With all the floods we are experiencing at the moment, I see in news reports , vehicles stranded in water*.
Sensible folks understand air intake and potential hydro lock and wrecked engines.
Anyone know if insurance companies will pay out if you drive into floods?

*……. I was going to say deep water but a foot deep will certainly do the trick for many cars.

 

[Spectric]

Anyone know if insurance companies will pay out if you drive into floods?

If you drive into water then it is your fault, I think if your car is parked and gets flooded then you stand a chance providing you have not parked it in a known flood risk zone. As said sensible people will not just drive through a flood, but you see pictures where people must have seen a stranded car in water yet still just attempted to get through themselves and also get stuck.

 

[Woodbloke]

*……. I was going to say deep water but a foot deep will certainly do the trick for many cars.

I've been following some of the clips on soshal meeja where drivers ploughs through fairly 'deep' water (past the door sills) at stupid speeds and cause a bow wave which swamps the bonnet>H20 into the air intake>into the combustion chambers>kaput engine.
I was always taught to drive through lightly flooded roads:



...in first gear at 5mph. The pic above was the road into town (since reopened to vehicular traffic, but not buses) a few days ago, probably no more than 400m from home. SWIMBO needs to wade through that every morning in her wellies on her walk (4.5miles) into the city to catch the bus to the hospital - Rob

Edit - at one point l'eau was well over the sidewalk

 

[duke]

Probably 99% of all drivers don't know where the air intake is located.

 

[Lurker]

Probably 99% of all drivers don't know where the air intake is located.

And 50% of them don’t know that an internal combustion engine has an air intake

 

[fuse]

whats an internal combustion engine?

 

[Blackswanwood]

Anyone know if insurance companies will pay out if you drive into floods?

It will depend on the circumstances.

Comprehensive car insurance covers accidental damage. If the driver deliberately ignored traffic signs or warnings, drives into a water course and was swept away the insurer could reasonably argue that it wasn’t accidental. There was an instance a few years ago where an insurance company didn’t pay out to replace a car written off where the policyholder deliberately drove around a barrier on a level crossing. They still had to pay out (iirc) £750k to repair the train and track though.

 

[Lons]

What Robert said.

It happened to me 25 years ago. My wife's fault because when I was picking her up from a night out she asked me to detour and drop off two of her friends who lived out in the wilds. That meant coming home via narrow unfamiliar country roads after midnight raining cats and dogs. I came around a bend didn't know there was a deep hollow filled with water as it just looked like a wet road so into the middle of it up to the cills and sucked water into the diesel engine which locked up solid.

It was a Citroen Xantia estate which the insurance company (Aviva I think) wanted to write off but I fought hard agaist that and they rebuilt the engine at at cost of £3000+

Accidental they said as there were no warning signs or stuck cars, no streetlights and conditions stopped any reasonable vision of the flood. I traded in the car soon after that in case the water had affected other components. Never liked it anyway. My wife never again asked me to drop off her friends.

 

[Cabinetman]

Yes I’ve seen the same vids, plus one of an old Landy the water was half way up his windscreen and flooding into the footwells. But he knew what he was doing, not my cup of tea but it takes all sorts.

“SWIMBO needs to wade through that every morning in her wellies on her walk (4.5miles) into the city to catch the bus to the hospital” - Rob
I do hope your poor Lady does this voluntarily!
Ian

 

[Eric the Viking]

I had a landy set up for wading.

The thing that gets noticed is the intake snorkel, but you also need breather pipes coming up high for the front and back differentials. Obviously, the car will still run if water gets in, but it will trash the gears, and IIRC, it can also run along the axles to the wheel bearings etc.

 

[Woodbloke]

“SWIMBO needs to wade through that every morning in her wellies on her walk (4.5miles) into the city to catch the bus to the hospital” - Rob
I do hope your poor Lady does this voluntarily!
Ian

She does indeed Ian, though I'm occasionally 'asked' (interpret that as you will ) to run her into the hospital if it's really hammering down, as in the recent storms we've had. She also always has a ride into work at an ungodly hour on Friday (out the house by 6.45am at the latest) as that's the day when I do the weekly shop as it's absolute bliss in Tesco and Waitrose 'cos they're empty when I get there - Rob

 

[AJB Temple]

It happens round here too. Laddingford has a problem with regular flooding. Last week with the continuous rain a section of road was closed that doesn't normally flood. It's easy to divert round it but this doesn't stop people ignoring the signs and going through the flood anyway, and inevitably getting stuck.

We used to have a Landrover 90 when offspring was about 11, and that was capable of dealing with quite deep water. Current main car is electric and the battery is very low down (floorpan). I very much doubt it would survive water above the axles.

 

[Duncan A]

Regardless of damage to the vehicles, it always annoys me when I see 4x4's ploughing along a flooded street at speed (because they can) sending even more water into the flooded houses than is already there.
Grrrrr!

 

[RogerS]

Regardless of damage to the vehicles, it always annoys me when I see 4x4's ploughing along a flooded street at speed (because they can) sending even more water into the flooded houses than is already there.
Grrrrr!

I agree. What I find even more annoying is the BMW SPC (small penis compensator). You know, the one so huge it virtually fills a car parking space to the lines on either side and so long it exudes out over and into the driving lanes. Why?

 

[Spectric]

No one has mentioned EV's and hopefully 100% of people know they have no air intake because they have no ICE. Here also you would hope a large proportion of people also know that electricity and water do not mix so they should not go wading through floods.

 

[MartinF]

During my time in the TA/TAVR, I used to drive or command one of these



Picture from Wikipedia.

It had a wading depth, without any preparation, of 3 feet. One weekend when I couldn’t attend, my troop went on a training exercise south of the North Downs and somebody “borrowed” my vehicle as there’s was unavailable. There was severe flooding on some of the roads that the troop navigated which was no problem for them. In fact, they helped tow out several cars that were trapped. What the crew didn’t know, nor did I, was that someone had removed the blanking plug in the hull that covered the starting handle access. The result was that the vehicle started filling up with water; the driver only noticed when it started lapping round his ankles. However, they returned to base safely and washed down the outside of the vehicle. What they didn’t do, and was left for me and my crewman to do, was clean out the mud and other detritus from the inside of the crew compartment. Words were exchanged!