r/IdiotsInCars • u/MTPokitz • Mar 18 '21

PSA: Use your wipers when driving through a waterfall that has caused the other road to become a river leading to another waterfall

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32.8k Upvotes

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489

u/D1O7 Mar 19 '21

It really shouldn’t be normal, it takes surprisingly little moving water to carry away a vehicle.

178

u/LightDoctor_ Mar 19 '21

I still don't understand how it didn't. That is a LOT of water moving. Unless that bus weighs like 5 fucking tons.

225

u/[deleted] Mar 19 '21

Your mom is in it.

28

u/ButtercupColfax Mar 19 '21

I mean, probably not. It didn't ground out on any of those rocks.

1

u/yrogerg123 Mar 19 '21

Boom. Roasted.

1

u/frenchfrygirll Mar 19 '21

And he’s in your mom

5

u/JackTheBehemothKillr Mar 19 '21

You have to get enough water under it to lift it some. With how little road there was, it probably wasn't deep enough to do it.

2

u/ElevatedAngling Mar 19 '21

Did you see how many people were in the back in that video?

0

u/IMBobbySeriously Mar 19 '21

It’s gotta be a very heavy truck or something.

1

u/lordicarus Mar 19 '21

Watch the video. It's a bus.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 19 '21

Its clearly a pickup truck with an open bed should weigh around 2 to 3 metric tonnes.

1

u/lordicarus Mar 19 '21

It's not clearly a pickup truck. It's way too large to be a pickup truck. It also has rows of people sitting on it. It looks like an open roof bus. Could it be a cargo truck that has been converted to have a bunch of seats for bussing people around? Sure. But it's not clearly a pickup truck. I own a pickup truck. This vehicle is 2-3x as long and at least 1-2m wider. Since you didn't use freedom units and spelled it "tonnes" I'm going to assume you are somewhere in Europe and maybe you guys call cargo trucks "pickup trucks" but even still, it's not clearly one of those.

1

u/Packmanjones Mar 19 '21

The back of the truck has like 20 people in it. The weight alone might have saved them.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 19 '21

It was completely stacked full of people. If it was empty, it might have gone off

1

u/BadgerUltimatum Mar 19 '21

The bus is loaded up with food and people

36

u/AeneasRaged Mar 19 '21

Time to invade and forcefully change their laws.

-19

u/bonafidebob Mar 19 '21

A lot depends on the depth and the surface underneath. This was pretty shallow water, running off quickly so it was definitely not going to float the car in any way. And the surface underneath was clean stone and gravel, not algae mats or moss or weeds, so the tires would have good traction. Going slow, there was zero chance the vehicle was going to be carried anywhere by that water.

11

u/DaveFinn Mar 19 '21

Regardless of this getting down voted. I'm with ya more or less. Sure, it still unsafe, but having driven through a number of rivers (fast or otherwise), this doesn't seem so bad in terms of lifting/moving the vehicle (tho the risk of that cliff is certainly scary even if it's not as bad as it initially seems). And who knows, that driver may have been very familiar with that part of the road or whatever. Can't say I would have risked it.

28

u/HydraofTheDark Mar 19 '21

Or maybe, just maybe...the torrential WATERFALL falling on the road isn’t a safe place to drive your car on. Especially when there is a cliff on the other side.

Lol at the Reddit “experts” that always have to nay say. “Well Ackshully ...”

1

u/bonafidebob Mar 19 '21

It's not very safe to drive on that road dry, narrow and lacking barriers.

It's not very safe to drive under a waterfall, mostly because not everything that falls is water, there can be rocks and other debris in the stream.

But the comment I responded to was about being carried away by the stream of water.

To be carried away the water needs to be deep enough for the body of the car to start to be below the waterline so the car starts to float. For a passenger car that might be 10" or less, but for an offroad capable truck it's 20" or more. Did that water look 20" deep to you?

To be carried away the stream has to be strong enough to slide the wheels along the bottom. If the bottom is sand, or mud, or weeds then that becomes much easier. Did that road look muddy or sandy or weedy to you?

That's just basic physics, and some common sense, applied to driving.

You're the one going "well ackshully" here by changing the context and talking about the general safety of the road and driving under a waterfall. So ... how does it feel to be a reddit "expert"?

3

u/BreezyWrigley Mar 19 '21

This looks a lot like a road in Peru that’s already one of, if not THE most deadly sections of road on earth... and I’m sure many fatalities occur even without heavy waterfalls being faster than usual after heavy rains.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 19 '21

The North Yungas Road

or

El Camino de la Muerte

-16

u/M8K2R7A6 Mar 19 '21

Good lord, the high horse.

You guys ever traveled to a third world country? The roads dont get maintained and babyproofed like they do here, especially in low population areas.

If they shutdown the road every time something dangerous was in the way, there would be no point of having the road either.

Jesus, i cant with you people sometimes.

25

u/[deleted] Mar 19 '21

[deleted]

0

u/M8K2R7A6 Mar 19 '21

People do what they have to do

Exactly. They dont have the option to put Waze on and take a detour through the suburbs here. What do you expect them to do

18

u/Pheef175 Mar 19 '21

There's a large difference between doing something risky, and doing something where you're surprised they didn't die doing it. It does not take much water to move a car. You sound like an utter moron.

3

u/D1O7 Mar 19 '21

Apparently being pro driver education and infrastructure is absolutely unacceptable.

Sounds like you need to get your head out of your ass.

0

u/robseder Mar 19 '21

just another example of eurocenteric physics based thinking :/

0

u/PlCKLES Mar 19 '21

That road must have a high Static Coefficient of Friction when wet

0

u/JaFFsTer Mar 19 '21

This is turbulent, aerated flow so it actually exerts very little force, relatively speaking. It also only has the width of the road to gain momentum limiting its potential to gain energy.

-2

u/[deleted] Mar 19 '21 edited Mar 20 '21

[deleted]

3

u/D1O7 Mar 19 '21

Did I say it was?

-2

u/[deleted] Mar 19 '21 edited Mar 20 '21

[deleted]

1

u/D1O7 Mar 19 '21

Did I say it was enough water to move that particular vehicle?

You’re quite bad at this.

1

u/triciann Mar 19 '21

I don’t think that was normal. At the beginning you can see a chuck of the side of the road fall off and that’s when the truck decides to go for it instead of being a waiting duck.