What Happens If Your Car Gets Struck By Lightning While You're In It?

No, being inside a car doesn’t guarantee 100% protection against a lightning strike. Rubber is a great insulator, but it can’t stand against one of the most powerful forces in nature.

A bolt of lightning contains a colossal amount of electric current; in fact, it’s so hot and powerful that it can raise the temperature of the air surrounding it by a few thousand degrees! Furthermore, before it reaches your car on the ground, it has already traveled through thousands of feet of air as well (air offers some resistance to the flow of electric current). The net resistance from those many layers of air is many times greater than the few inches of rubber in your car’s tires.