Tornado Deaths in Car Hit a High

By Dan Verbeck

Kansas City, Mo – It's a message that cannot be overdelivered. Being in a car can't save you from a tornado. Statistics calculate into a disturbing trend.

With 14 people killed while in their vehicles and savaged by tornados. 2008 has turned into the highest annual total of these kinds of deaths in a decade. There have been three in Kansas in less than a year. Commander of the highway patrol for the Kansas-metro, Dek Kruger tells KCUR news, the educational message may be shopworn but many still haven't learned its value. In Captain Kruger's words:
Most people think that if you're in a car that's probably the safest place for you to be in a tornado situation, because you've got the protection of the car around you. But what they don't take into consideration is, theres all this debris flying through the air at around a hundred miles an hour. Your car is just not a good place to be.
Still, Captain Kruger says it's very hard to convince drivers it's safer to lie down in a ditch than weather out a tornado in a car. In the decade ending last year, 7 percent of the 705 people killed by tornadoes in the U.S, rode in vehicles. Rode To their deaths.