[imagesource: Tim Marshall / Unsplash]

A woman drowned in a freak accident at the Gqeberha harbour on Thursday morning after accidentally driving a new car off a ship into the sea.

Eastern Cape police said the 32-year-old woman had been found trapped inside the vehicle at about 3.45AM.

According to witnesses, the woman was on duty at the vehicle terminal, and as she was manoeuvring a Ford Ranger onto the vessel, the vehicle unexpectedly accelerated and plunged into the harbour.

“The woman could not exit the vehicle which subsequently submerged and she drowned,” said Eastern Cape police spokesperson Captain Sandra Janse van Rensburg.

She said the victim’s body was retrieved and her name is being withheld until her next of kin have been informed.

A 32-year-old woman who works at the harbour in Gqeberha drowned in the early hours of Thursday morning.

Police say the victim, who worked at the vehicle terminal, was driving a Ford Ranger Cab onto a vessel when she suddenly accelerated.

According to witnesses she then hit a… pic.twitter.com/4sBMaWQgje

— Yusuf Abramjee (@Abramjee) April 25, 2024

An inquest docket was opened at Humewood SAPS for further investigation.  It is a truly unfortunate situation and our hearts go out to the family of the deceased.

I recently had a dream about crashing a car into the water and woke up realising I have no cooking clue how to escape such a scary situation. Someone on X recommended using the car headrest to break a window because it has those metal spikes, which sounds like it could work.

Experts told NPR that you should try to get out right away when the water level is still below the windows. You’ve got about a minute until the car goes under so unbuckle your seatbelt, and get the youngsters out before you squeeze yourself out.

Once a vehicle is more fully submerged, the pressure from the water against the windows and doors can make it difficult to open them, even if the car’s electronics still work. So it’s no use calling emergency services or waiting for the car to fill up with water.

According to Gerry Dworkin, a technical consultant for the safety training company Lifesaving Resources, one common misconception is that you should wait to escape until the vehicle fills up with water, so that the pressure between the inside and outside of the car can equalize.

“That’s nonsense,” he said. “The escape needs to occur immediately.”

The best way to survive a vehicle submersion is to escape through the windows before the car is fully underwater, experts agree.

It might be worth remembering this simple acronym, SWOC:

S — Seat Belts Off

W — Windows open

O — Out Immediately

C — Children First

Also, apparently, the movies always get it wrong so don’t take your advice for escaping a drowning vehicle from them.

[source:iol]