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Why do drivers drive through flooded roads ignoring the road closed signs

35 replies

Plun · 02/03/2026 13:25

Car insurance companies will not pay out if drivers ignore the road closed signs.

Will pay out if the car is parked such as in a car park or driveway and area floods. Know about 4 people who had this and paid out.

Where I live - there is a road that floods first and always see vehicles stuck in it. On the way to work, same thing - two exits on A road get closed

OP posts:
Vintageblueribbon · 02/03/2026 16:48

The building where I work is built on marshland
This is very well known
The carpark is split into three parts and one part floods at the first sight of rain
Im amazed at how many people drive into the water-its there and very visible (and deep)
My colleague pointed out its always men (shes right) and only about half are 'big' cars
They try to go flying round and some get stuck-its sheer stupidly
Some do come in and try to have a go at us when they get stuck (like its our fault)
When its not flooded they do 'doughnuts' around it and more than one has crashed into the lampposts

About a mile down the road,there is a street that has a reputation for flooding
Doesn't stop people (normally men)from driving straight into the water and getting stuck-the water is there,its well signposted and known for it

I swear there is something missing in their brains

IrishSelkie · 02/03/2026 16:50

ImFineItsAllFine · 02/03/2026 14:02

Sometimes no-one comes and takes the flood signs down after the water has receded so people stop taking them seriously.

Also I think some people don't know what driving through a flood actually does to a car.

This. We often have flood signs up year round, so we just check the flood maps before setting off or pay attention to the weather to know if a road is really flooded or not.

Imaginingdragonsagain · 02/03/2026 17:00

mindutopia · 02/03/2026 16:12

I don’t know. But my moron friend did this and wrote off her £100k car. 🙄 No insurance pay out and not the first time it’s happened to her.

£100k?! And she’s done it before. Wish I had her money!!

Saz12 · 02/03/2026 17:08

It's staggering how many d9nt cons8der the damage they cause if the flooding is due to a river or lake overflowing onto the road.

Iocanepowder · 02/03/2026 17:10

Yeah i drove through one last week as it hadn’t been taken down on time.

akkakk · 02/03/2026 17:33

I have two fun stories about floods:

many years ago I was driving an old MGB roadster and approached a ford in a village which looked a bit deep - I went in gently and decided that it wouldn't make it - so I reversed out and turned around... days pre-sat nav, so I sat in my car with the roof down (sunny day) to look at a map...

a few minutes later the noise of a fast car approaching from the other side of the ford, a sort of hissing noise and then silence... I turned around and looked up - a modern convertible Saab (also roof down!) was sitting in the middle of the ford, water over its bonnet, with a faint steam rising from around it... the chap driving stood up in the driver's seat looked at my wet tyre marks as I had driven back out of the ford, and yelled at me: "If you could get that old thing through, how come mine didn't make it!"

*
in 2007 there were lots of floods across the Cotswolds, I had then an old range rover and had been driving it through the floods quite happily and had popped over to friends to help them with their flooded house... for entertainment I then parked it up on a local small bridge over the Thames (quite small river at this point - where the road the other side had flooded for about 1/2 a mile - historically they were water meadows either side designed to flood...) to watch local traffic... three fun interactions:

Brand new Land Rover Discovery turned up - couple in their mid 40s smartly dressed - the chap driving put the window down and asked me what his chances were of getting through - I told him: your car will have no problem, how confident are you at driving through water? he answered - about 8/10 whereupon his wife leaned over and hissed at him: 2 out of 10, 2 out of 10! They turned around and went another way...

Then a brand new range rover turned up smartly dressed chap in his 50s with young teenage son next to him - very similar conversation, but in response to being asked his confidence, he simply pressed some buttons, the car lifted up another inch or so and he confidently drove through...

Finally a BMW x5 with a group aiming to get to a wedding up north... again, the same conversation, but the reply this time was: well it is a 4x4, no point owning it if it can only cope with puddles... and he drove off into the flood and around the corner...

an hour or so later, getting bored, I went home and as I gently drove through the floods and around the first corner - there was the BMW x5 - completely stuck, engine totally dead. It turns out that the engine air intake is at the same level as the spoiler at the front bottom of the car (amazed it even copes with puddles!), so it had hoovered up the water and hydro-locked the engine - one dead engine, one dead car. The owner had phoned BMW assist, but couldn't give them a postcode and his answer of 'just over the Thames, between two fields and in a flood was apparently not accurate enough for recovery to come out to him... They kept asking him to press the BMW assist button on the dashboard, but for some reason no electronics were working in the car! So I towed him back to my house - he left the keys for BMW assist to collect the car later that week, and I dropped them all back into town to pick up a hire car (and go a different route to the wedding!)

amusing stories, but neatly sum up confidence / ability / car's capability... there is no one answer fits all scenarios - but in the right car with the right knowledge, it is surprising how much water you can drive through...

Plun · 02/03/2026 19:20

One of the vans I saw that drove into the floods and got stuck was a company van - a nationwide company that have engineers coming to customers’ homes.

What would you do to that employee if you were their boss?

OP posts:
AgeingDoc · 02/03/2026 19:56

IrishSelkie · 02/03/2026 16:50

This. We often have flood signs up year round, so we just check the flood maps before setting off or pay attention to the weather to know if a road is really flooded or not.

Same here. There are some roads that do flood quite frequently and the council just leave the signs there, I presume because it's too much trouble to keep putting them out and collecting them. The effect is that you don't know whether the road is genuinely flooded or not and have to make your own assessment of the situation. Other times there are roads that really should be closed that get ignored. This Winter I have encountered both roads covered with warning signs that I didn't think twice about cycling through, and others with no warnings that I wouldn't have attempted in my SUV. It's completely inconsistent so not really surprising people get it wrong sometimes.
It's the same with roadworks - signs get left for weeks sometimes. There has been a lot of work on different roads near my house recently and if I didn't drive through any of the road closed signs I'd have been housebound for at least the last fortnight.

Arlanymor · 02/03/2026 20:01

Somersetbaker · 02/03/2026 16:42

Maybe somebody told them to dip their headlights?

Ha ha! Love it!

Createausername1970 · 02/03/2026 20:09

Some signage is very misleading, it can be put in the wrong place or not taken away when the problem has been resolved, so it ends up not being taken seriously.

But I think a big issue is the increased reliance on Sat Nav and just going where it tells you to, without any need to actually read signposts etc. I think some people have got out of the habit of using their initiative, and blindly "take the first left" even if there is a puddle the size of Windermere in the way.

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