Lightning Can Kill You In Cars Now So We Might As Well Give Up

I will be the first to admit that I have a lightning phobia, along with heights. Both are rational, because both can easily kill you. But when it came to lightning, there was always The Car, an impenetrable metal fortress. But not anymore, as lightning can now go through windshields and melt your face.

A Toyota Rav4 sitting in a dealer's lot in Florida was just sitting there, minding its own business, when a murderous bolt of lighting struck not the car's metal roof, but its glass windshield, and completely melted the interior of the car, according to local NBC affiliate WPTV.

Okay, so the car was unoccupied, technically making this particular lightning bolt not very murderous at all, but YOU KNOW ITS INTENTIONS. And furthermore, no one knows how lightning came up with this new development, in its continuing search for ways to kill us, as glass is not normally a conductor of electricity.

Cars were supposed to be our Saviors From Lightning, mainly because their metal bodywork not only attracted the bolts, but also because in doing so the bodywork acted as a Faraday cage, directing the lightning around the occupants inside, and keeping everyone safe and sound.

In your house, the metal pipes of your plumbing might end up inadvertently killing you if they were to be struck while in the shower, but the very nature of a car protects you. It sounds weird, but here you can see it in action in an old episode of Top Gear:

"Everything's going to be fine," Hammond says, at the end.

Everything's going to be fine.

Not anymore.

Photo credit: The US Fish and Wildlife Service