sundance-communications.com Forums Member Forums Phone Booth electrocuted by urinating

You just can't make this stuff up!
"Man electrocuted by urinating on downed power line after car crash"

story here

EDIT: to repair link

Egads. This reminds me of a story told to me some years ago by a guy who was "in country" in the late 1960's or early 1970's. He was assigned to a support batallion that set up and operated generator trucks, these were enourmous puppies that actually had room for operators inside the back of the truck. The way he described it, the operator area sounded similiar to the engineer's station on a locomotive.

Anyhow, they had two or three of these units set up and running, and part of the setup involved driving ground rods for each unit. The entire chassis of the unit was bonded to this ground, which was of the course the ground reference for the generators (I believe the lighting supplies were actually DC). Apparently one was left floating, and his buddy left the cab and stepped on to the rear platform to take a leak one night, with the result that you could imagine.

Jim
**************************************************
Speaking from a secure undisclosed location.

Ever see a dog run on three legs?
If he hikes his leg on an electric fence all you'll see is the raised leg still raised, the other three digging for traction, and all you'll hear is a terrible squeal heading out into the night.....

Didn't the MythBusters disprove this?

https://tviv.org/MythBusters/Barrel_of_Bricks,_Pissing_on_the_Third_Rail,_Eel_Skin_Wallet#Peeing_on_the_Third_Rail

I think it was because the stream isn't ever a stream it's droplets. Again, this is from memory and the link was from a 3 second Google... so I may be wrong

Electrified trains use DC. Don't know if that would have anything to do with it or not. As many articles are on this when googled I'd have to say it's ligit.

I used to work on the Railway opps sorry Railroad, in south London the train power is a raised third rail 700v DC pulling 4000 amps during rush hour....not making this up...when raining as you stepped over the juice rail you would feel a smack to the back of your neck as the rain run down your coat and made contact with the rail.

I think it was because the stream isn't ever a stream it's droplets.

That depends on your age! :rofl:

Yeah, once you get above 600 volts, especially DC, it is a whole different world of electricity. Even droplets can be jumped, not to mention that DC travels more like static electricity (in one direction). DC is "real" electricity. AC is only alternating because we make it that way.

I do have a hard time believing that the wire would have had a voltage of anything more that 277 volts to ground in the US. That being the case, it would have just sat there getting hot and eventually blowing a cutout. Anything else would have been a much higher (primary) voltage, likely thousands of volts. At that voltage, that wire would have been dancing around or at least showing some arcing. Even a drunk is smart enough to not piss on an arcing wire.

My vote is that there is more to the story. News reporters love to glorify stories with the word "electrocute", even when someone just got shocked.

Ed -

Here in NYC the Con Ed OSP is either 4160 or 13KV - unless it's higher. The Underground voltage can be up into the 100KV range and higher. I believe that OSP out in the "country" gets up into those real high ranges too.

Having said that -

You're absolutely right - any broken cable carrying thousands of volts and laying on the ground would be dancing the Macarena :db: and spitting sparks.

You'd have to be pretty hammered to whizz on that!

Sam

BTW - the Subway here 660VDC and is pretty scary to work around.

I'm sure there has to be more. Like he was standing in a puddle (that he made) or went to do a faceplant and grabbed the line or something. I'm sure it's some kind of sensationalized reporting like most things in the news. Why report the "facts" when you can reports something similar.

Whenever I see anything above 220 I get real careful real fast.

A guy who worked on the substation at the building I worked at back in HS once told me "There are no stupid high-voltage guys, at least not twice." Damn good reason for that.