What to do if you slide on ice or hit a flooded underpass

Why New York gets both problems

This city has real winter cold and a summer that produces intense, fast rain. The winter risk is ice on the elevated and the exposed. The summer risk is water, moving fast, in places that sit lower than the street around them. The two remnant-storm events that stranded the most vehicles in recent memory, Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and the remnants of Hurricane Ida in 2021, were both water, not snow, and Ida in particular filled highway underpasses in minutes.

Where ice hits first

Ice does not arrive evenly. Bridges, ramps and overpasses lose heat from above and below, so the elevated segments of the BQE, the Cross Bronx Expressway and the FDR Drive, and the approaches to the George Washington Bridge and the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, glaze over while the ground-level road a block away still looks clear. Untreated side streets in the outer-borough neighborhoods freeze next and stay frozen longest where they get little winter sun.

Underpasses and low spots

New York's flood risk on the road is rarely a river. It is a highway underpass or a low dip that sits below the street on either side and fills during a heavy rain while the approach looks completely normal. Water in an underpass is deeper than it appears from a driver's seat, because you cannot see the dip until you are in it, and a stalled car in a filling underpass is a genuinely dangerous place to sit. If the water is still rising, get yourself clear first and tell us that when you call.

Never restart a car that stalled in standing water

If your engine died while you were driving through water, do not turn the key again. An engine draws air in through the intake, and if the intake is sitting below the waterline, cranking the starter pulls water into a cylinder instead of air. Water does not compress the way an air-fuel mixture does, so when the piston comes up to compress it, something has to give, usually a bent connecting rod or a cracked engine block. That single extra crank is often the difference between a car that needs a tow and a car that needs a new engine.

Salvage assessment or a normal tow? What decides it

How high the water got is what matters, not how deep it looked from the driver's seat. If water reached the door sills, the floorboards or higher, treat this as a flood-damage assessment rather than a routine breakdown: get the vehicle to a shop or your insurer's preferred facility for inspection before anyone tries to start it, and let them check the engine, transmission fluid and electrical system before you spend a dollar on repairs. New York salvage and flood-title rules attach paperwork to a badly water-damaged vehicle, so this decision is not only mechanical. If the water only came up around the tires and the engine never took a breath of it, this is usually a normal stuck-vehicle recovery and tow. A vehicle that slid into a curb or barrier on ice should get the same suspension and alignment check before it goes back on the road.

Snow parking rules are not a snow-route system

People expect New York to clear cars off marked winter corridors the way some cities do. It does not. The city's last formal winter parking emergency was declared decades ago and those old signs were removed, so there is no standing network to be cleared. What actually happens is that the Office of Emergency Management can declare a snow emergency when significant winter weather is forecast, which triggers special parking restrictions, and alternate-side parking is suspended during those events. Cars parked where an active restriction applies can be ticketed or towed fast. Check 311, the NYC311 app or the city's alerts before a storm rather than looking for a posted winter sign.

Why an ice- or flood-affected vehicle goes on a flatbed

A vehicle that slid on ice or sat in standing water, even briefly, may have compromised brakes, a soaked electrical harness, bent suspension or damage in places you cannot see from outside. Ask the assigned operator to quote a flatbed for ice or flood recovery rather than a wheel lift, so nothing drags, nothing spins, and nothing is asked of a drivetrain that might already be damaged.