What Should You Do When You Are Driving Over Flood Water?

KL Flood

The Klang valley includes Kuala Lumpur, Petaling Jaya, Subang, Shah Alam and also Klang. Due to poor drainage controls by our authorities, motorists often face flash floods in the above areas. My youngest daughter, S. Lin, was caught in a flooded area while returning home from Putrajaya on the 2nd day of Hari Raya.

Should you be caught in flooded area, as a driver, what should you ideally do?

The best alternative I would suggest to any driver is, Stop at the wayside. And do not proceed any further. But by following my advice, you would most likely be creating a traffic jam. And you’ll be irking the displeasure and curses of other motorists following behind you.

To proceed into a flooded area, with the rest of the on flowing traffic, might possibly cause your vehicle to stall mid way, as the flood waters become deeper.

For your knowledge, in flood situations, manual cars are driven slightly different from automatic vehicles. Be it manual or automatic, there certainly is a way, or technique to prevent your vehicle from dying off or stalling.

My late father, who was a lorry driver, used to advise me this. To prevent your vehicle from stalling in a flooded area, one must see to it that flood waters do NOT enter into the exhaust pipe. If in any event, flood waters enters the above pipe, your vehicle engine will die off.

So what must a driver do? My dad recommends this. I remember him advising me that in manual cars, one must engage the first gear. And most important of all, accelerate as hard as you can.

Of course, in doing the above, you should engage half the clutch in order to control the vehicle and prevent the engine dying off.

What about automatic cars? What advice should be given to drivers of such modern cars in a flood situation?

Well, I suppose, in such vehicles, one should put the car in drive mode. And step on the accelerator hard as one does in a manual driven vehicle.

The next time you are driving into flood water, please follow my advice above. You will definitely benefit from it.

By | 2012-12-29T12:57:03+08:00 December 28th, 2012|Driving Tips|6 Comments

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6 Comments

  1. Salihin Rahim December 28, 2012 at 2:58 pm - Reply

    Aautomatic cars? one should put the car in 1st gear (No1 or No2). And step on the accelerator hard as one does in a manual driven vehicle.

    • Cikgu Yap December 29, 2012 at 12:57 pm - Reply

      You are correct. Put auto car in forward diver. Step on the accelerate pedal as hard as possible.

  2. Laina December 29, 2012 at 9:45 am - Reply

    i think that this phrase “….one must see to it that flood waters do enter into the exhaust pipe” should be …. flood waters do NOT enter into the exhaust pipe. It is also dangerous to brake suddenly when driving through partially flooded roads …

    • Cikgu Yap December 29, 2012 at 11:08 am - Reply

      Thanks for pointing that out. Correction has been made.

  3. Madhusoodhanan Nair June 11, 2013 at 11:54 am - Reply

    It is a beautiful piece of timely advise.

  4. Aaa January 15, 2017 at 5:45 pm - Reply

    This practice is unsafe and may cause death. One should be careful when approaching flooded area especially with high streams!

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