Car hired by two Japanese men sinks through ice in Salo
Wet driver escapes through passenger door at last moment
Two Japanese men living in the Finnish coastal town of Salo escaped unharmed at the last moment when the rental car that they had driven onto the sea-ice foundered through the weak ice into six metres of very cold water.
The sinking of the car took place on Sunday evening in a strait near Salo’s island of Vuohensaari. The current in the area is reasonably strong.
“My boyfriend and I were on the shore looking in astonishment at a car driving slowly on the ice. We could clearly hear the weak ice cracking under the weight of the vehicle. Suddenly the car’s front wheels sank through the ice. The person on the passenger side immediately opened his door and jumped onto the ice, but the driver failed to get his door open”, recalls 18-year-old student Ninni Heinonen of Salo.
“We were afraid that the man would drown with the car. At the last minute he, too, managed to escape through the passenger side door. In a flash the car was gone. The driver was soaked up to his waist”, Heinonen explains.
Heinonen’s boyfriend drove his car closer to the shore for the wet man to keep himself warm inside it, before the arrival of an ambulance.
The men were in a state of shock and unable to call for help.
The sunken car was a Europcar car rental Audi registered in the autumn of 2008. According to Europcar, the car, with only a few thousand kilometres on its clock, is worth EUR 45,000.
The car now lies at the bottom of the sea at a depth of six metres, some 30 metres from the Vuohensaari bathing beach.
The incident was first reported by the Salon Seudun Sanomat daily in its Tuesday issue.
The episode left a sizeable hole in the ice, in which there were still two boots and a piece of plastic that had come loose from the Audi floating around amongst blocks of ice on Tuesday.
On Wednesday there will be an attempt to raise the vehicle by using divers to place air mattresses under the car, into which air will then be pumped. The weak ice prevents the use of hoisting equipment.
A towing vehicle with long wire hawsers will then be used to pull the car to the shore, once the local volunteer fire-brigade has first created a long hole in the ice with chainsaws.
According to the Vuohensaari residents, dozens of cars have been seen driving on the ice of the Halikonlahti bay.
In terror the residents have followed the goings-on, for the ice is nothing like as strong as it seems.
In the place of the accident at the western tip of the Vuohensaari island, because of the current there is often an unfrozen patch, even when the rest of the inlet is frozen solid. The locals stay clear of the narrows in question.
The police, who were alerted of the incident at 18:10 on Sunday evening, are not looking into the case, as no-one was injured.
Managing director Jussi Holopainen of Europcar Finland is happy to hear that the Japanese men escaped unharmed.
According to the managing director “one can always replace the car, as the world is full of them”. In practice the Audi will be written off as irreparable.
In the general car rental agreement drivers are instructed not to drive on ice outside the marked general ice roads. For foreign customers the rental agreement terms are given in English, Holopainen says.
“If a Finn hired a car, say, in Dubai, he would probably think twice if it was such a good idea to take the vehicle off-road into the sand desert.”
Holopainen is not familiar with the details of the Salo incident.
According to Holopainen, the customer is responsible for a rental car. Europcar’s 2,000 rental cars have traffic insurance and fire and theft insurances, but not voluntary all-risk insurance.
“In the case of an accident, the cars are usually rented out with an insurance excess that varies between 700 and 4,000 euros”, says sales manager Timo Keskinen of Europcar.
“If a car gets totalled that is simply considered a trading loss and we will suffer the damage. To have such a large number of cars insured would be more costly than not to have them insured”, Holopainen adds.
This is the first time in the company’s history that a hired car has actually sunk through the ice.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 4.3.2009 - TODAY |
 Car hired by two Japanese men sinks through ice in Salo |
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