Who knows how tired/stressed they were after the hiking incident. To then drive demanding roads in demanding weather would have been challenging.

After a particularly harrowing wilderness experience many years ago, I was a physical wreck for about 36 hours afterwards. Had I attempted to drive during that time it could easily have ended badly.

Condolences to their families.

How fast would they have had to been going? That's over half a football field from shore. Did the boat ramp paradoxically angle upwards to give them extra lift?

Evil Kinieval's longest jump in his career was only 141 feet (unsuccessful, BTW). On a lightweight motorcycle. Using ramps. Driving at high speed. And he was TRYING.

Looks like old Thelma and Louise here beat him totally by accident.

So, Evil Kinieval couldn't do it in perfect conditions while trying as an experienced professional but there's no possibility that there's more to this than just stupidity? huh.

I would guess that the car floated for a few minutes and it's forward momentum carried it that far.

Tides or wind, perhaps?

Probably a combination of the car's speed and the tide. IIRC wind and fog don't mix.

Water provides great resistance to stopping forward motion. A car would not float far. You fire a rifle bullet into water, and you'll be lucky if it goes 6 feet before totally stopping. Check out this video, at the 2:32 minute mark and at 2:43, so see a demo of this (and no comments about the wisdom of firing your AK47 underwater!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cp5gdUHFGIQ The scene at 4:33 is awesome too (although unrelated to our car-into-the-water discussion).

Rifle bullets travel a lot faster than cars. If the car indeed floated for 175 feet, it would have probably taken several hours to do so, allowing enough time to escape. But the women did manage to phone dispatchers on their cellphone (underwater?) after the event, so maybe they were preoccupied with chatting and forgot to try to escape.

IF the report of 175 feet is accurate, this whole things seems so implausible as to be almost laughable. It simply makes zero sense as reported.

Duh! LOL!

Wind and fog can mix. I have seen 40 knot winds and 25 foot visibility. It gets very foggy on the Channel Islands (USA).

It sounds like they simply made a left instead of a right (or vice versa) and ended up in th drink instead of on the main road. A simple but costly mistake.

How cold was the water, I wonder. They'd been lost in the fog until "just a few minutes earlier". Is it possible that the combination of elements were just too much for them? It was chilly here yesterday. If it was there too, hypothermia would have been a risk, especially with the dampness of the fog.

It took an hour for the rescue crew to reach the car. Is it possible that the tide moved the vehicle during that time?


More important than udging and name calling, what can we learn from this?

-don't drive in thick fog, especially on unfamiliar roads and/or at night?
-roll down or break the windows to get out of a submerged vehicle?
-if you rescue someone who's lost, maybe stay with them a for a bit, or follow/lead them out, instead of just assuming they are OK?
-learn to swim to survive and make sure your kids do as well?
-activate the locator GPS thingy on your cell phone?
-always carry a PLB?