Lightning Strike Sends Chunk of Highway Through F-150 Windshield
This scary incident could have ended much worse, but thankfully, both F-150 occupants suffered only minor cuts.
Mother Nature can be quite devastating, as we see on an almost daily basis. Whether it’s tornados, hurricanes, wind, flooding, or just regular old thunderstorms, we (and our vehicles) are almost always facing some sort of potential catastrophe. Unfortunately, two people riding in a Ford F-150 near DeFuniak Springs, Florida suffered from one of the more unusual weather-related accidents we’ve ever seen this week.
According to Walton County Fire Rescue, the pickup was traveling down Interstate 10 when lightning struck the road in front of it, which sent a huge chunk of pavement flying through the windshield and out of the back glass. Miraculously, the pavement entered the middle of the vehicle, preventing what could have been an absolute tragedy, as both occupants of the F-150 only suffered minor lacerations from the broken glass.
Lightning-related injuries and deaths are somewhat rare, as just one in 15,300 people have a chance of being struck by lightning in their lifetime. Just 10 percent of those folks are killed by the lightning strike, and there were just 17 fatalities caused by lightning strikes last year in the U.S. Regardless, both cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning strikes are quite common, with 170,549,822 of them occurring last year alone.
As far as how many times a lightning strike has caused a chunk of pavement to go hurdling toward a Ford F-150 – the best-selling vehicle in the country – well, we don’t have any sort of statistics on that. But if we had to wager, we’d guess this probably isn’t exactly a common occurrence, despite the favorable numbers. If nothing else, this crazy accident certainly gives us something to think about the next time we’re traveling in a bad storm.
It’s also a somewhat ironic incident given the fact that Ford just announced that it will reveal the all-electric F-150 Lightning next week. This probably isn’t what the automaker had in mind in terms of unplanned, spontaneous marketing, of course, but we must admit, it is pretty ironic timing.
Photos: Walton County Fire Rescue/Facebook
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