We never know what kinds of situations life is going to throw at us, so any knowledge that helps keep us a little more prepared is always going to be valuable.
And fortunately, there are no shortage of people out there with valuable advice for how to keep ourselves from getting into a perilous situation and how to get out of it if one darkens our day anyway.
RELATED STORIES
And since it’s easy to underestimate how exhausting and disorienting a sudden drop into water can be, you’ll likely notice that many of these tips involve preventing yourself from drowning.
That’s certainly the case with the detailed guide we’re getting today, but it’s particularly valuable because it outlines a scenario in which our own cars can work against us.
As part of a series of TikToks outlining what to do in dangerous or embarrassing situations, screenwriter Ben J. Handy asked us to imagine what we’d do if our cars were to fall from a bridge.
As he put it, “Decide now. Deciding now could save your life then.”
And if you can’t think of an answer, don’t worry because he soon gives us one. Before we do anything else, we’re going to need to remove our seatbelts because this situation transforms them from protective straps to death traps.
From there, we need to find our ways out of the car, but that’s easier said than done.
That’s because if our windows happen to be up, we’ll find that opening a car door is impossible.
That’s because an enormous amount of pressure builds up on a car’s door when it’s submerged and the window in that door needs to be broken to equalize the pressure.
To do this, Handy recommends covering whatever part of our body can best achieve that as much as we can and pounding on that window with all the strength we’ve got because it won’t be easy to break.
But once that pressure is equalized, we should be able to open the door — because going through the window is likely to severely cut us up — and begin our ascent.
But this step isn’t as simple as it may sound because he said, “People forget which way is up, they lose track of up. I know it sounds stupid, but it really does happen in those situations.”
That’s why he tells us to expel a little air out of our mouths. After all, that will make some bubbles come out and we should follow those bubbles because they’re going up.
And we can see from his video available here that our work isn’t done once we reach the surface, but there’s one more thing to consider before we get there.
Handy said we should be listening for boats and paying attention to how high-pitched the engine sounds. If it’s getting higher, that boat is moving towards us and could take our heads off.
If it’s getting lower, it’s moving away and it’s safe to come up.
