autoevolution
 

Parking Your Car on a Frozen Lake Is a Bad Idea, 15 Owners Find Out the Hard Way

Parking your car on a frozen lake is not a good idea. No matter what makes you think it is alright.
Cars fell through ice on Lake Geneva 1 photo
Photo: YouTube screenshot
Around 15 vehicles were damaged after their drivers decided to park them on Wisconsin's Lake Geneva. The lake was supposedly frozen, but the local temperature was above freezing at the time when the drivers parked their cars on the ice.

Eventually, the ice cracked because of the weight of the cars and the exterior temperature and the Sun did not help the situation in any way for the 15 vehicles that eventually sank in the lake.

According to WISN.com, the first cars started to go through the ice around two p.m. Fortunately, nobody was injured, as the vehicles were unoccupied. Their owners and passengers were at the Winter Fest held near Lake Geneva.

The owners motivated their decision to park there saying that they could not find any open spots in a parking lot. We do not know how limited the parking situation was near Lake Geneva in Wisconsin, but leaving your car on a frozen lake is a bad idea any day.

The improvised parking was set up in several rows, so the weight of the cars was concentrated on a particular spot on the lake. Since gathering the cars in one place brought more pressure on the ice, and the Sun and above freezing temperatures made the ice thinner, a disaster could have happened anytime, as one or more vehicles could have been trapped under water with passengers inside.

Naturally, in the age of social media, the incident quickly made headlines and became a trend on Twitter. It is unclear whether insurers will pay for the damage, as some companies offer restricted coverage in cases that involve owner neglect.

Moreover, parking on an icy lake, or driving on one, is risky behavior that insurance companies hate.

At the time of writing, most of the vehicles were recovered from the lake using a tow truck provided by the local Fire Department. Some of the owners managed to escape the icy lake using their car's power.

If you liked the article, please follow us:  Google News icon Google News Youtube Instagram X (Twitter)
About the author: Sebastian Toma
Sebastian Toma profile photo

Sebastian's love for cars began at a young age. Little did he know that a career would emerge from this passion (and that it would not, sadly, involve being a professional racecar driver). In over fourteen years, he got behind the wheel of several hundred vehicles and in the offices of the most important car publications in his homeland.
Full profile

 

Would you like AUTOEVOLUTION to send you notifications?

You will only receive our top stories