Why you should never leave a plastic bottle in your car in this warm weather

Looks innocent, right? Leaving a bottle of water behind when you get out of your car. Still, you better not do it. Yes, feel addressed. You know that the chance is quite large that there is a bottle in your car. Maybe even at this moment. What does it matter? A lot. It's extremely dangerous with this weather.

Why? An (empty) plastic bottle acts like a magnifying glass in the car. If the sunlight hits it, a lot of heat suddenly concentrates on one point. The fabric (or worse: the leather) of the seat in a car can get so hot – if the sun shines brightly on the bottle of water, that is – that it can start to scorch and even catch fire completely. Yikes.

This actually happened in Giethoorn last week. A tourist saw smoke coming from a car, after which he called 112 just to be safe. When the fire department arrived on the scene, it turned out the smoke was caused by, you guessed it, the terror of the empty plastic bottle. So let this be a lesson this summer, dear people: a warned person…