Turn Around Don't Drown — Flood Safety
Cited in 2 Likelier entries (2 risks, 0 decisions).
Used in 2 entries
For each citing entry, the verbatim excerpt and Likelier's calculation notes (how the source's number was converted to the lifetime-probability framing) are shown below. Click through to read the full claim ledger.
-
- Statistic
Over half of flood-related drownings occur when a vehicle is driven into floodwater; ~12 inches of moving water can carry away most cars
“"Over half of all flood-related drownings occur when a vehicle is driven into hazardous flood water. It takes just 12 inches of rushing water to carry away most cars and just 2 feet of rushing water can carry away SUVs and trucks."”
Calculation notes
Establishes that driving into floodwater is the dominant submersion mechanism, not bridges and canals. Basis for the floodwater multiplier: the single largest controllable risk factor is the choice to enter a flooded roadway.
Source date: 2024-01-01 · Accessed: 2026-06-11
-
- Statistic
Per CDC data cited by NWS, over half of all US flood-related drownings occur when a vehicle is driven into hazardous flood water. 6 inches of moving water can knock an adult off their feet; 12 inches of moving water can carry away most cars; 24 inches can sweep away SUVs and trucks.
“"According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over half of all flood-related drownings occur when a vehicle is driven into hazardous flood water. ... Six inches of fast-moving water can knock over an adult. It takes just 12 inches of rushing water to carry away most cars and just 2 feet of rushing water can carry away SUVs and trucks."”
Calculation notes
Used to anchor the US behavioral-multiplier story rather than the global normalized figure. The NWS / CDC "over half" framing is the evidence base for the personal_factor_multipliers entry on driving into flooded roadways and for the "turn around, don’t drown" paragraph in the body text. NWS reports an approximate long-run average near 88 US flood deaths per year across its 30-year window, which gives a US lifetime baseline of ~88/333M × 60 ≈ 1.6e-5 ≈ 1 in 63,000 — an order of magnitude lower than the global figure because US flood mortality is dominated by behavioral (vehicle) rather than exposure (coastal-delta inundation) pathways, and because US warning and evacuation infrastructure is unusually mature.
Independence note: NWS hazard-statistics pages and CDC mortality reporting are partially overlapping (NWS Storm Data is one input CDC uses to classify weather-related deaths), so the two figures should be treated as a single US authoritative chain rather than two fully independent estimates.
Source date: 2024-01-01 · Accessed: 2026-04-11
