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Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

Texas has it easy.

I've seen several places in England (and at least one in the western United States) where they have fords.

For those not familiar, water runs over the road full-time, and people are expected to just drive through it like it's no big deal. Except for right after a storm, when it is a big deal. It's essentially the intersection of a road and a stream where a bridge should be, but nobody ever built one.

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For example: https://maps.app.goo.gl/eqjHKqDxGxFNz47D7 complete with the google streetview car (presumably) driving through it

And a collection of videos https://www.youtube.com/@jawalton2001/videos - it goes without saying, these aren't major thoroughfares.

Ha, the stream is not that bad in 2021 when the Google car drove it in your link. But if you go forward two steps, the date changes to 2024, and if you pan back to the river there is a much stronger/higher flow. Maybe they drove through it in 2021 but said no in 2024.

Also, there's a quizzical cow up the road a bit and now I want to live in this place. Thanks.

My dad went through one of those in England where it was a bit deep. The car had to have a new engine.

Make a mental note of the level of the air intake for the engine in your car, if the water doesn't make it that high you should be fine as long as you don't get stuck (no, i don't where it is on my car).

The engine gets damaged when water gets into the piston chamber i think. Water compresses less than air so important things bend or crack if the engine is running too long with water in it.

I wonder how electric cars fare with deep water.

I wonder how electric cars fare with deep water.

The ground clearance for my EV is 7 inches. The manual specifies it can handle 18 inches of water.

I don't know if that's the point where water messes with the electronics, or a swift current would start to move it sideways.

> I don't know if that's the point where water messes with the electronics, or a swift current would start to move it sideways.

Flotation might also be a possibility?

Less of a possibility than in a similar combustion vehicle, though, since EVs tend to be heavier.

It’s probably all well and good until a vehicle gets old and gaskets no longer seal, immersion becomes more of quicker contributor to failure, electric or not. E.g. cracked boots on a ball joint or not so sealed wheel bearings.

Also why I don’t like pressure washing anything mechanical.

E.g. Drove through a heavy rain storm and my ecu decided one of my wheel speed sensors was faulty and suspended my abs and traction control. Even after drying it out on a nice day of driving, the error persisted but I was able to reset it with my vehicle specific obd reader and not an issue again. Ugh.

I fear that advice might make some people overconfident when the water isn't stationary. Flooding doesn't have to be that intake-high to sweep a car sideways off the road.

All liquids are incompressible- water doesn’t compress at all.

It seems to me you could do something interesting with floating warning devices that only appear when the water's too deep.

Sounds like overkill.

Stick in the ground will do it.

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...

As long as the ground doesn't dip halfway across...

You can see ripples in the waters surface when there’s a hole in the crossing.

At least when the average depth is shallow enough you’d want to cross in a normal vehicle.

If in doubt, walk it first. (Unless you’re in an area with crocodiles, of course.)

If you can’t walk the crossing, then under no circumstances should you drive it.

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