Do Rubber Tires Protect You From Lightning

If you check out the graphic below you will notice how the current exits to the ground through the tires.

Do rubber tires protect you from lightning.

Tires are too small to insulate a lightning strike. The truth is rubber tires don t prevent lightning strikes in the least bit. Being in a car doesn t guarantee 100 protection against a lightning strike just because of the fact that it has rubber tires that do not conduct electricity. Like trees houses and people anything outside is at risk of being struck by lightning when thunderstorms are in the area including cars.

Rubber is indeed an electrical insulator but your shoes or bike tires for instance are way too thin to protect you from a lightning strike. Lightning often strikes more than three miles from the center of the thunderstorm far outside the rain or thunderstorm cloud. However the steel frame of a hard topped vehicle provides increased protection if you are not touching metal. Do the rubber tires on your car protect you if you are outside the car and you re leaning on it.

Ironically it s not the rubber tires insulating the car but rather the conductive metal framing which protects you by conducting the electricity around the vehicle and its occupants. The good news though is that the outer metal shell of hard. What keeps you safe while inside a car is the metal body surrounding you which creates a faraday cage. Here s where your grandmother is right though your car is a fairly safe place to be in a thunderstorm but for a different reason entirely.

Rubber does not protect you from lightning. Bolts from the blue can strike 10 15 miles from the thunderstorm. Most people believe the rubber tires on a car prevent lightning strikes. The lightning follows the path of least resistance down the metal framework and into the ground.

So the rubber tires on your car do not protect you from lightning they simply ground your vehicle so that the electricity has a place to exit.