Does Placing Household Items On Your Vehicle During Severe Weather Actually Protect It?

It’s common practice to run out and try and shield your vehicle with whatever you have laying around when a severe storm comes through. Because hail damage to your vehicle is a headache. But does it work?

Severe weather is common this time of year, especially in Texas. People get creative and throw all sorts of household items onto their vehicles in hopes of avoiding damage. So a high-school baseball team, a police officer and a physics professor decided to test it out and see what actually was effective. They threw pitches at junkyard cars to re-create baseball sized hail damage.

What they found was that basically, if the only things you have are thin items such as blankets or yoga mats, they’re probably not doing much of anything. But if you have something more durable like pool inflatables or air mattresses, they might just work.