How to tell if your car was struck by lightning if you’re driving in the stormy season? This is perhaps a concern you want to find the correct answer and the best fixes for it.
Knowing the common symptoms warning that your vehicle got struck by lightning is necessary to work out the proper solutions to protect your engine and safety.
Therefore, don’t ignore the popular signs in the article to determine whether the direct lightning hits your car.
If you are careless in this case, it’s possible to ruin your vehicle, leading to the sudden stopping of the engine, broken windows, and poor performance.
How To Tell If Your Car Was Struck By Lightning?
The symptoms of your vehicle being hit by lightning may be tolerated automobile or superficial damage, depending on the lightning strike intensity and point of contact.
Below are some common signs indicating lightning strikes on electric-powered, diesel, and gas vehicles.
They include burn marks, electrical damage, engine and brake malfunction, bad ignition system, poor airbag deployment, fire ignition, or tire damage.
Burn Marks
Burn marks are visible and easily recognizable if lightning strikes your car. When driving in stormy conditions, sudden lightning can appear and leave unexpected black marks on your car.
You can find this sign at any position on your vehicle’s exterior, such as its windows or the top of the car. These marks can become a terrible eyesore in your vehicle.
They are the awful culprit for making your car look older and less appealing. Yet, you don’t need to worry about this problem as this is only the low-intensity damage from lightning strikes.
Apart from the visual effect, they can not cause more serious problems, break your engine, or threaten your safety.
Ignition System Problem
Another symptom you should pay immediate attention to is the faulty ignition system.
This system ignites gas-fired boilers, fuel-air mixtures in an internal combustion engine, and rocket engines to generate heat electrodes or spark to high temperatures.
However, if lightning strikes your vehicle, it can provoke serious problems inside the internal combustion engine with faulty spark ignition.
Automotive Engine Damage & Malfunction
Besides, lightning can cause an automotive engine to fail. You can detect this sign through common problems, such as the warning light, strange smells, and weird noises.
So, it’s best to check the engine and watch out for malfunctions and damage from lightning while driving in such conditions.
This will help you have proper repairs to protect your car, improve engine performance, and keep your drive safe.
Faulty Airbag Deployment
Do you know that a powerful lightning hit may wreak havoc on your automotive airbags and result in serious effects?
The problem with the airbag deployment during accidents is also due to your vehicle being struck by lightning. When the lightning hits your car, something can go wrong inside.
If this problem occurs, it can lead to potential accidents or risks while driving, such as hundreds of injuries or even death, as your body is no longer cushioned against collisions.
Brake Malfunction
The brake system malfunction is another hint of your vehicle being struck by lightning.
You can detect this problem through typical symptoms, such as the illuminated brake warning light and squealing or squeaking noises.
In addition, some other signs, like vibrations, burning odors, or bad brake pedal, also warn you of automotive brake malfunction.
Electrical System Damage
The car hit by lightning electrical problems also become common when running on the road in stormy conditions.
Strong lightning can collide with the electrical system in your car and trigger unexpected and obvious damage. You might notice the system shutting off when driving.
Thus, turning off any unnecessary electrical accessories on your vehicle when driving on a stormy day is better.
Fire Damage
A direct lightning strike may take a toll on the automotive internal mechanism system and catch a dangerous fire. This is because the physical damage appears on the car’s outside.
Plus, the lightning bolt sets your vehicle on fire, so the metal objects, such as the metal frame, metal cage, and metal roof may fall on the vehicle’s interior when getting struck by lightning.
You should note that powerful lightning may fire up your car as soon as it hits the right automotive electronic components, which may be catastrophic.
Engine Shutdown
Like electrical system damage, lightning may also ruin your automobile’s engine and make your car stop running.
If you’re driving in a storm or severe weather, the lightning can shut your engine down because it becomes a powerful electrical current to replace the engine’s operation.
Broken Exterior
The powerful lightning can break your car exterior. Despite being weak, the lightning still damages the car’s plastic, metal, or paint.
What Happens If Your Car Is Struck By Lightning?
What happens if a lightning hits a car? The answer is nothing will happen.
This is because your vehicle’s body uses hard metal as a main material for the exterior shell to conduct the lightning’s electrical energy into the ground.
But, in some extreme situations, your car still manifests the common effects below if it is struck by lightning.
Damage Your Car’s Exterior
This damage doesn’t affect your safety, even when your car is running.
Yet, the high lightning voltage can destroy your vehicle’s exterior, such as fusing side mirrors and scorching or stress-cracked paint, glass, or plastic.
Damage To Computer Chips
In addition, powerful lightning can ruin the automotive computer chips in the engine control system when you drive in a storm with a severe thunderstorm.
Lightning can generate an electrical source to break the vehicle’s electronics, melt the computer system, or mess up the automotive sound system.
How to Fix a Car Struck By Lightning?
What to do if car struck by lightning? Follow these useful tips to solve this problem.
Pull Car Over
First, pull your vehicle to another safe and dry location, turn the auto engine off, and wait for the strong storm to ease off or disappear. This way will help you protect yourself from the natural chaos.
In this case, note that you don’t touch the automotive exterior, the steering wheel, or any of the components outside your vehicle.
Keep driving your vehicle to a safe place but not under any tree. Then, park the entire metal box there and leave your car alone.
Activate The Hazard Light
After you pull your vehicle over, keep turning the emergency lights on to warn the urgent case for other drivers.
Activating the hazard lights and turning off the engine is necessary for strong thunderstorms, under the dark sky, and with dangerous lightning strikes.
This also helps keep your safety and allow other drivers to notice your vehicle’s stopping place in blurry and limited vision.
Keep staying inside your car to ensure your safety. It’s unwise to open your car’s door to go out since the lightning can hit your body anytime.
Avoid Touching The Exterior
Remember, the lightning will hit the car’s exterior with the electric power. Thus, you don’t touch the car’s exterior, including the metal components, to stay safe.
Keep your hands in a safe position to avoid touching any metal parts of the car which are connected to the automotive exterior.
These parts can comprise the metal components, such as the steering wheel, rubber tires, automotive gear shift, and dashboard.
These metal parts allow the lightning’s electric current to penetrate into the ground to protect your car.
Therefore, they become the electric energy conductor to transfer the lightning. So, if you touch them, you can also become a conductor and face an accident, such as serious lightning injuries or even death.
Repair The Damaged Parts
Apart from the above useful tips to protect your vehicle and you from the danger of lightning under the storm, you need to find the proper fixes for the broken automotive parts.
If your car is unfortunate to get a lightning strike while driving in the storm, you need to take it to an automotive shop and ask for the assistance of professional mechanics.
They will help you check the entire vehicle to identify the main problems and find the best repairs.
This is a simple and economical way to fix the damaged parts, such as damaged tires, by the actual lightning strike instead of purchasing a new part.
Conclusion
We’ve helped you know how to tell if your car was struck by lightning while driving under the storm.
As you see, lightning can hit your vehicle and trigger serious failures.
It can leave eyesore burn marks, destroy the car’s ignition problem, cause automotive engine or brake system malfunctions, and deploy the airbags.
Besides, it may threaten your safety and lead to sudden accidents on the road. Thus, you must follow the safety rules in this article while driving in stormy conditions.
It’s necessary to protect yourself and your vehicle. Do not touch the car’s exterior; turn on the emergency lights with the turn-off engine to avoid the worst issues.