Teens die in car in icy pond

[asterroc]

I wish there were a little more factual information in this article. Five teens driving to school went off the road and into an icy pond. It took rescue crews 2 hours to get the car out, at which time the kids were found with their Bibles in their laps, still buckled into their seats, two already dead and the other three did not make it.

The part that's confusing me is if they had time to get their Bibles out, why did they not try to get out of the car?

Comments

[sammka.livejournal.com]

I think that it really depends on whether or not you're submerged and whether or not water is flooding in. It takes you longer to die of asphyxiation in a car with limited air in it, than it takes to die of drowning if you're underwater with no air at all. Then again, once you run out of air, it's the same either way (except, I guess, for the additional issue of hypothermia).

From this article and the fact that they used divers, the car was probably completely submerged underwater, in a lake that might have been quite deep. They might not have been able to open the doors at all, or had anything at hand (or the presence of mind) to break a window. We also don't know if the car stayed dry on the inside, or started flooding, so it's not clear what the effect of breaking a window would have been.