Posted on 05/01/2017 10:41:17 AM PDT by Morgana
Edited on 05/01/2017 11:19:24 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
FULL TITLE: 'I need some [bleeping] help!': Incredible moment heroes rescue a dying BABY and a toddler from a truck that flipped into a ditch as their father tried to escape the Texas flooding
This is the dramatic moment a father and his two young children were rescued from their overturned truck as rapidly rising floodwaters surrounded the vehicle.
Phillip Ocheltree, 25, of Wills Point, Texas, was driving home with his two kids in the backseat after tornadoes ripped the state on Saturday, when he says his truck 'hydroplaned off the highway.'
The vehicle flipped, trapping Ocheltree and his infant son Marshal, and little girl Addyson, aka Addy, inside, as rising flood water surrounded the car making it impossible to open the doors.
Thankfully, passersby spotted the upturned truck near Myrtle Spring and rushed to the family's aid.
Although tornadoes do not factor into this story AT ALL, I can see how reference to them makes the story more interesting, and almost serves to excuse the father for his poor driving.
The car hydroplaned because of the flash flooding. It does not take poor driving for this to happen. It can be very difficult to tell how deep water is in the roadway. You do not have to be going very fast for a car to hydroplane.
She is in the hospital and doing well according to a FB update from her dad yesterday.
To be accurate, the car did not hydroplane due to flash flooding.
It hydroplaned due to speed.
There is a reason why some people spend $200 on a tire. Cheap tires are more prone to hydroplaning than a high performance tire.
The flash flooding caused water in the street. It can be very hard to tell how deep the water is in that situation. From safemotorist.com
“Hydroplaning occurs when a tire encounters more water than it can scatter. Water pressure in the front of the wheel pushes water under the tire, and the tire is then separated from the road surface by a thin film of water and loses traction. The result is loss of steering, braking and power control.”
Speed is a definite factor as hydroplaning is most likely to occur when a vehicle is going over 35 mph.
My point is that the driver may not have realized he was going at a dangerous rate of speed because of the difficulty of gauging water depth during flash flood conditions. He may even have been driving below the normal speed limit. We don’t know. He was driving under dangerous conditions and had an accident. How much driver error contributed is not known.
bump
Never fails every time there is a storm like this someone always has poor driving and ends up having to be pulled from high water. Just don’t know what is wrong with people.
Every northerner and most westerners like to rip on the south for racism, but look how that crowd, black and white, teamed together and saved that child. They couldn’t even know what color the child was when the vehicle was in the water. This is the reality of most of southern life. It’s the northerners who segregate these days. Take a look at Washington State, that spews leftist bile all the time — it’s one of the whitest states in the country after WVA (which is white largely because it is so poor, there’s not even enough money for welfare).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.