Because it won’t happen to meeeeee.
That’s the reason. Every single person who enters floodwaters believes they’ll make it across.
Many even do - which is also bad. One gets through, even if it is pure luck, now the fool behind thinks they’ll make it because the first idiot did.
From experience with this kind of thing when I was a teenager, all the incidents I knew of where people died involved poor planning and/or misunderstanding how to swim across a flooded river. It was always quite doable if you planned your entry, exit and backup exit points correctly, taking into consideration the water level and flow rate.
The most common way people would die was attempting to swim directly across a flooded river and exit opposite where they entered. It’s basically impossible, and people would get exhausted and drown. The second most common was to not plan an exit point. You need a place where the flow rate close to the bank at flood level is low enough that you can stop yourself and get out, and not get slammed into something and knocked unconscious and down. Also, you don’t want to do it anywhere there are submerged objects there’s a chance of getting snagged on.
Swimming in flooded rivers needs to be treated as an extreme sport. You need to be fit, you need to be aware of the risks, you need to plan carefully. Too many people just jump into a flooded river without thinking
Because the only vehicles on the market suitable for Australian conditions are off-road vehicles.
Just like how some people with sports models of road cars feel an obligation to defend their brand by taking off fast at traffic lights, some people with off-road vehicles feel an obligation to defend their brand by driving through floodwaters.
It is a way to overcome your buyers remorse and feel better about the 10’s of thousands of dollars that you owe the finance company.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The chief executive of Natural Hazards Research Australia, Andrew Gissing, said there were a number of reasons people attempted to make it across a flooded section of road.
Vehicle type, familiarity with the area and social perceptions were just some of the factors drivers took into account before deciding whether to forge ahead, he said.
Mr Gissing said people with four-wheel drives were more likely to take on flooded roads, as they tended to think their cars were much safer and heavier than others.
Pictures from VicRoads showed large sections of bitumen in flood-affected areas swept away earlier in the week, with guardrails warped and broken by the power of the water.
Sixty-three per cent of participants said they had encountered flooding in the last year, but if they thought their fellow road users would disapprove of them turning around, they would continue through the floodwaters.
Researchers also found that having a plan B, and actively seeking alternate routes — even when floods weren’t impacting an area — also prevented drivers from entering floodwaters.
The original article contains 653 words, the summary contains 174 words. Saved 73%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
People got places to be
