When news reports started to come in that a car with a mother and three children had plunged into the Tweed River and only one child had escaped, many parents felt a pang of fear.
After the car was pulled from the water and it became apparent that Stephanie King had died trying to save her children, that pang of fear grew into a need for answers.
What would they do if they found themselves in that situation with their children strapped into the backseat? What could they do?
Videos began appearing on social media feeds of parents who had searched the internet for answers.
One of the most common of these videos was from a North American television station and featuring Dr Gordon Giesbrecht, a professor at Canada’s University of Manitoba.
Dr Giesbrecht is recognised as a world leader in research into submerged vehicle escape.
He told ABC Local Radio that he had conducted more submerged vehicle scenarios than anyone else in the world and has, in the name of research, driven a car into water at 40km/hr in order to experience and demonstrate the scenarios he writes about.
Very little research on escaping sinking cars
Dr Giesbrecht’s interest in the subject of escaping submerged vehicles began when he was asked to be an expert witness at an inquest in 2005.
A snowplough had broken through ice into a lake in North America and the driver had drowned.
“One of the things that came up as I was preparing was that there was very little research done on vehicle submersions,” Dr Giesbrecht said.
“And what was done was very sparse.”
Dr Giesbrecht now believes that half of what he said at that inquest was wrong.
“I thought it was [right] but after that, we did a series of studies called Operation Alive: Automobile Submersion, Lessons in Vehicle Escape and we learned a whole lot of things,” he said.