HowTo:Drive Your Car Out of A Lake

Preparing to enter the car.

So you have a car, but the car is in a lake. This can happen in a variety of ways. For example, your car may have tumbled off an embankment into a lake. You may have mistaken the lake for something else and driven directly into the lake. Or, the lake may have formed around the car. Regardless of how the car got into the lake, you want the car out of the lake. You don't want to spend the money to call a tow truck or hire a crane. Well, this article will demonstrate the necessary steps to driving your car out of a lake.

Step One: Get into the car

You will need to learn how to swim for this to work, since a lake usually means a sizable quantity of water too deep to wade through. If the car has already sunk, this is tricky. If you open the door while the car is underwater, you will need to learn to breathe underwater. You should have diving equipment handy, including scuba mask and oxygen tank. If the car is still floating, opening the door will typically cause the car to sink, and again you will need underwater breathing equipment. But you need the car to sink, so that you can drive the car along the bottom of the lake, unless the car has a rudder on it. If the door will not open, simply break a window, and carefully climb/swim in, trying not to scratch yourself on the broken shards of glass. Fortunately, most cars have safety glass windows. Again, if the car has sunk and is underwater, this will bring water inside the car.

Step Two: Turn the key in the ignition

You did remember to bring the car key with you, didn't you? Otherwise you will need to hot-wire the car, which is another matter entirely. You will need a waterproof engine for this to work, otherwise the engine will be flooded, and the car will not turn over. Moreover, the water will short-circuit all electrical systems in your car. After this happens, you no longer have a car, but a metal box with wheels, doors and windows (which no longer work since they were power windows). These make great underwater terrariums, or alternatively, mussel farms, and are a good source of iron and other minerals in the local fishes diets. Either way, problem is solved, you either no longer have a car to drive out of the lake, or you have a waterproof engine which is running.

Step Three: Start driving

You will have to be careful not to get your car stuck in the mud, weeds, and holes at the bottom of the lake. It helps if the lake has a sandy or rocky bottom, and/or if you have 4-wheel drive. Hopefully you have a full tank of gas so that you don't run out of gas before you reach the lake's edge. A detailed map of the lake may help you reach your destination, the lake's edge. It helps if this map lists all the underwater features of the lake, such as tree roots, large boulders, sunken logs, dirt or gravel roads, groves of dead trees, sinking mud features, crab farms, stacks of old tires, sunken ships, patches of sand, and possibly even plane wrecks. Should it be an urban lake, these features may include fire hydrants, streetlights, other cars parked underwater, clogged storm drains, fallen trees, underwater power lines, and underwater roads.