I was driving through Berkshire trying to find a country pub in a mates Z4. We got the the point where the road, still tarmac'd, had 4 foot high banks either side and only wide enough for one car. We were both praying not to come across a car coming from the opposite direction. The road was a series of corners, so reversing would have been a nightmare!
Turns out, it was the right road though!
All that said. The driver of this car, should have stopped when, if not before, he got to the off road puddle. It might have been a nightmare to reverse out of, but better than a dead car.
The trouble is, sometimes when you have gone to far, the road is not wide enough to turn around, and there are cars behind you so you cannot reverse.... my sort of nightmare!!
Which is why I am particularly careful where I take my Masser.
To the extent that when there were some heavy rains and some standing water of unknown depth, I got my wife to get out of the car and test the depth! On realising it potentially looked rather deep, I had to do a rather embarrassing 7 point turn with a rather large detour, but hey no standing water and so no hydrolock!