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The story
On the morning of the 7th, two cars sank in floodwater during heavy rain at an underpass in Iwaki City, Fukushima Prefecture, and a woman in her 60s who was in one of them was taken to the hospital unconscious, where she was later confirmed dead. Heavy rain from Typhoon No. 24 and the autumn rain front is believed to be the cause, and a car also flooded at a separate underpass elsewhere in the city. On 5ch, photos from the scene drew comments like “a flooded road surface really can look like a normal road” and “I get why someone driving through for the first time couldn’t tell,” alongside debate over whether EVs or gasoline cars are safer when submerged, and criticism over who is actually responsible for deciding to close underpasses during heavy rain.
Fukushima Minyu Shimbun — Published Mon, 9/7 at 12:26
At around 7:45 a.m. on the 7th, a passerby called emergency services (119) reporting “a car is submerged” at an underpass on a city road in Kashimamachi-Yoneda, Iwaki City. According to the city fire department, two cars flooded; a woman in her 60s from the city was rescued from one of them unconscious and taken to the hospital, where she was later confirmed dead. The occupant of the other car reportedly escaped on their own. The scene is near the “Iwaki Evelia” commercial complex.
Separately, one car also flooded at an underpass in Nishikimachi-Tokuriki in the same city, but its occupant escaped unaided. Heavy rain fell across the city that morning due to Typhoon No. 24 and the autumn rain front.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
How did this happen
It's completely submerged — I guess the water's surface just looks like the road
I get it if it's your first time driving through there, it'd look like a normal road
Come on, that's basically a river
The actual scene
AI-generated mockup
Make it reproduce the pouring rain too
With BYD's Blade Battery, it has waterproofing, so there's a good chance she'd have survived
Gas cars stall out once water gets into the exhaust pipe
Looked it up
Under the IP67 waterproof rating, it's built to withstand being submerged in 1 meter of water for 30 minutes while stationary.
It also has a safety feature that automatically cuts off the high-voltage battery when it detects flooding or impact beyond a certain level, so there's no risk of electric shock.
When it comes to flooding, you could say EVs hold up better than gas cars.
Even if the battery's fine, once flooding is detected
the safety feature kicks in to prevent
electrical leakage, so you're stuck either way
Whether it's gas or EV, once the water
reaches the hood, it's over
Gas cars have a higher fire rate than EVs, so you're more likely to die that way
Plus you can die of carbon monoxide poisoning
and you can die from drowning if submerged
Plus they emit CO2
What's gas cost these days anyway?
My "rakko" (a cutesy nickname posters use for their EV — lit. "sea otter") does 40km for about 130–140 yen in electricity
The rakko wins on every front
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CqyYk1wUsAACFE3.jpg
This one, they actually did put countermeasures in
there's no way this looks passable
it looks like a dead end
https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AA2bI2bm.img?w=534&h=300&m=6
That looks exactly like a pond or a reservoir
how is anyone supposed to get through that
Once you're a few dozen centimeters in, the car's probably just floating
There are basically countless underpasses out there — who's supposed to decide and go shut them all down?
I'd guess it has to fall to the local municipal police to close it off.
Someone from the city office comes out and shuts the barricade
This is basically the view from the driver's seat
Middle of the night, pouring rain, and some idiot riding your bumper full-speed on a mountain pass — I can only picture myself driving straight into it too
Why can't they just block the entrance like this from the start?
A lot of underpasses do already have warning lights or signs though
Their own fault — just leave it as a matter of personal responsibility
At this point it's just the Izu Islands and Chiba left
Background and Key Points of This Story
An underpass — a stretch where the road dips below the surrounding grade — sits lower than its surroundings, so during heavy rain drainage can’t keep up and it floods within a short time. One factor behind accidents like this is that a flooded road surface reflects light, especially at night or in rain, making it hard to distinguish from an ordinary paved road. Deciding to close a road is normally the job of the road authority (the municipality or police), using water-level sensors or patrols, but some areas have so many such sites that immediate action everywhere isn’t realistic. In the thread, posters weighed EVs’ flood resistance (IP67 waterproofing plus an automatic battery cutoff) against gas cars’ risk of water getting into the exhaust — but both become undrivable past a certain water depth regardless, and what tends to get overlooked is that the real countermeasure isn’t which type of car you drive, it’s simply not driving into a flooded road at all.
※This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary of the 5ch (News Speed+) thread「y‘å‰Jz•Ÿ“‡E‚¢‚í‚«‚̃Aƒ“ƒ_[ƒpƒX‚ÅŽÔ2‘ä…–v@ˆÓŽ¯•s–¾‚Ì60‘ã—«A”À‘—æ‚ÅŽ€–SŠm”F@ [ôôôš]」。
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