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There is a line of anti-static rubber straps sold for cars which attach to the chassis of the car and dangle down to the road. It is claimed that they allow static electricity to drain off, preventing mild static shocks.

Examples:

  • SCA Anti Static Strap

    It is believed that while in motion, the friction of air molecules against the body of a vehicle creates a build-up of a certain amount of static electricity. This SCA Anti-static Strap is a special conductive strap with metal inserts which ground all static charges and reduce this static build-up.

  • eBay Seller

    Belt Ground Wire prevents shock produced by the displacement static electricity which charges power on chassis and reached to the car by electricity through to belt. Prevents shock by static electricity.

    This site also claims it reduces travel sickness, but I am not asking about that.

  • Amazon Seller

    Prevent due to air dry the static friction with the ground cars, do effectively eliminate static electricity, and ensure that does not produce high voltage discharge phenomenon.

Explain That Stuff is dismissive:

Do these strips work? No, they're entirely useless.

However, their justifications include arguing that car tyres are more effective conductors making these devices redundant (and yet I still get shocks from my car) and that ones that don't touch the ground are a waste of time (which is a strawman - no-one claims they work when they are worn out)

In practice, do these static strips work, when properly fitted, at reducing the frequency of being zapped by static charges when touching a car?

Oddthinking
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  • If you like this question about ESD, you may also like [this question about antistatic bracelets](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/41987/antistatic-bracelet-without-a-ground-connection) – Oddthinking Aug 01 '23 at 10:41
  • Notably they also used to be on tanker trucks carrying fuel. Apparently no longer in use. – pipe Aug 01 '23 at 18:12
  • @pipe some countries still require grounding during transportation of combustibles. But the ones that do require that an actual conductor connects the chassis and the ground, so metallic chains are usually used, not rubber straps. – Danila Smirnov Aug 03 '23 at 04:29
  • @DanilaSmirnov: One of the confusing things about the car straps is: Some contain a metal wire. Some allege to contain metal particles in the rubber. Some seem to contain metal strips on the outside. So when people say "Rubber is an insulator, and they don't work" I don't know if (a) the nay-sayer is ignorant or (b) the original straps were insulators, and manufacturers have since responded to the debunkings by including some metal (perhaps making them work, perhaps not). – Oddthinking Aug 03 '23 at 05:36
  • Grounding of static charges from vehicles has long been used as a means of avoiding travel sickness. But whether this is technically effective (other than being simply psychosomatic) is debatable. – Nigel J Aug 03 '23 at 21:32
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    @NigelJ: There is no point *debating* it. It is an empirical claim, and can easily be empirically tested. But that is explicitly not what the question is about. – Oddthinking Aug 04 '23 at 04:13

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