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news
Near Miss of the Day 296: Poor driving in electric car
Today’s video in our Near Miss of the Day series comes from Norway and shows the driver of an electric car pretty much all over the road as they try – unsuccessfully – to get in front of a cyclist.
It was filmed in Stavanger by road.cc reader Stuart, who lives there. He told us: “Heading downhill sitting pretty much on the 30km/h limit and a Zoe (I hate electric cars sneaking up on me too) decides she wants to try to pass, over the speed humps, with an oncoming cyclist, heading into the right hand bend where 90+ per cent of all traffic on 2 and 4 wheels makes a left turn (including me).
”Pretty sure her left rear tyre mounts the opposite kerb too taking the junction totally on the wrong side,” he added.
> What to do next if you’ve been involved in a road traffic collision
> Near Miss of the Day turns 100 - Why do we do the feature and what have we learnt from it?
Over the years road.cc has reported on literally hundreds of close passes and near misses involving badly driven vehicles from every corner of the country – so many, in fact, that we’ve decided to turn the phenomenon into a regular feature on the site. One day hopefully we will run out of close passes and near misses to report on, but until that happy day arrives, Near Miss of the Day will keep rolling on.
If you’ve caught on camera a close encounter of the uncomfortable kind with another road user that you’d like to share with the wider cycling community please send it to us at info [at] road.cc or send us a message via the road.cc Facebook page.
If the video is on YouTube, please send us a link, if not we can add any footage you supply to our YouTube channel as an unlisted video (so it won't show up on searches).
Please also let us know whether you contacted the police and if so what their reaction was, as well as the reaction of the vehicle operator if it was a bus, lorry or van with company markings etc.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
Latest Comments
- BalladOfStruth 49 sec ago
+1 on this. In my experience, driving professionally tends to bring complacency and arrogance over competence. I've had far more issues/run-ins...
- chrisonabike 1 hour 14 min ago
Indeed - but it's no more inconsistent than our current road design - very often UK high streets are "for shopping" and also a busy through route....
- chrisonabike 1 hour 51 min ago
People who are subsidised* to make big holes in road (amongst other negative effects) complain about the holes in the road. Same people also...
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If you ask the world's leading economic commentators how many people have been rescued from abject poverty by capitalism the average answer would...
- The Larger Cyclist 3 hours 9 min ago
loads of parking
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I hate it when I can't find the obvious source of a puncture.
- don simon fbpe 5 hours 57 min ago
Now, if we're talking gravel bikes, that's a whole different story. Gimme, gimme, gimme! Apologies for the Facebook link....
- wtjs 6 hours 19 sec ago
The police are operationally independent, in fact the regional Police and Crime Commissioners have to swear in their oath of office that they will...
- brooksby 6 hours 5 min ago
"'Right", said Fred, "we'll 'ave to get a move on…"
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33 comments
I have always found that electric vehicles have made large amounts of road noise and have never had one behind me that I had not noticed.
Teslas seem especially noisy, louder than some small petrol driven cars.
And Expatpat, I really don't care what you feel that you have to stuff in your garage.
Congratulations to Expatpat on having an expensive car and washing machine.
Wanna know what bike I ride too???
The new Porsche Taycan will, I suspect, leave everything else for dead in the sector. Hopefully there will be a trickle down of tech to other parts of the VAG range.
Sadly, electric cars dont do enough to reduce pollution, because they also produce tyre dust and road dust. Here's UK air quality advisor Prof. Frank Kelly:
"while electric vehicles emit no exhaust fumes, they still produce large amounts of tiny pollution particles from brake and tyre dust, for which the government already accepts there is no safe limit"
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/04/fewer-cars-not-elect...
"Electric vehicles emit no NO2 but do produce small particle pollution from the wear on brake discs and tyres and by throwing up dust from roads. A recent European commission research paper found that about half of all particulate matter comes from these sources."
Electric cars do have a very powerful regererative braking capacity, if drivien sensibly. This reduces or practically eliminates the need to use the compound (Friction) brakes, hence reducing particle pollution and noise as well as the generation of waste heat.
Prof Kelly probably would like if all of us only cycled and produced no emissions to acheive his nirvana, but for most, electric cars reduce emissions at the points where it is important, congested cities. Also as renewable energy sources grow, there will be less reliance on fossil fuels.
Lets keep hoping that there will be further advances in battery tech which reduces the reliance on rare minerals and such.
Yeah , Can’thelp but Think that the rich elite , who propound saving the planet are missing a trick here . Why is Al Gore still living g in his 24 bedroom mansion , jetting around in a private plane while telling us ordinary folk to watch out carbon footprint - he’s not alone amongst the elite - one rule for them, one for us - issue number limits to their jetsetting flights , don’t put taxes up on the people . The elite are coining it out of this - are you listening Gore - Yeah , I know the answer already !
No amount of hyper-ventilated "hype" about electric cars in the UK can survive a few basic figures. Basic numbers, folks ... sorry!
"to meet UK electric car targets for 2050" (yup ... that's the UK; ONLY the UK!) "we would need to produce just under two times the current total annual world cobalt production, nearly the entire world production of neodymium, three quarters the world’s lithium production and at least half of the world’s copper production."
From https://www.nhm.ac.uk/press-office/press-releases/leading-scientists-set...
Repeat ... that's ONLY for the UK's targets.
Yeah ... I know I'm shouting.
But remember the fantastical "selling" of bio-diesel a few years ago ... as the "solution" for climate change? There was just a minor problem ... that bio-diesel as a "solution" required eight planet earths ... entirely fertile, and entirely devoted to growing sugar-cane or whatever. Duuuh.
Kinda makes some of the contributions so far ... look just a little short-sighted?
Yeah, because battery tech won't change at all between now and the year 2050 :facepalm: whilte continuing to burn the seemingly infinite resources of dinojuice is the way forward.
Also, I didn't know there was a UK target for building a certain number of (electric) cars?
I expect there is an implicit target for cars, as we have a target for emissions.
As to batteries, the reason people are skeptical is we see very little progress in mobile phones. All that has happened is bigger batteries that charge faster, we are not seeing any jumps in efficiency and how long a charge lasts. If the sort of changes we need are not seen in millions of phones, it's a bit of faith to hope it will be fixed by 2050.
People who don't understand electric transport and energy sourcing would do well to keep quiet and not expose their ignorance. Best to leave it to those who know
25,000 miles in the last 12 months and I've burnt zero diesel aswell as saving a lot of money, also my electricity is all renewable. My battery is not leased and has an 8 year warranty. (BMW top tech bods think the batteries will last way longer than they had originally hoped.) Electric car batteries will be upcycled or recycled as the technology process evolves.
(I can't really commute 43 miles into London each day, especially with a fully ruptured achilles. And well, I can't afford a £6000 per year season ticket for the shite
publicprivate transport system that boils people to death in summer and has the worst pollution in London, along with taking longer than driving/cycling when it does actually work properly.)As to the video, properly sh!t driving! (The Zoe is not quick.)
It's only a 100K car because that's what the sticker on it says. Other 100K list cars are much better looking and better built. Like you, nobody pays that much to drive it. You're actually driving a 30K white good and paying the appropriate monthly.
Nope, it is a good looking car and easily outperforms whatever gas guzzler you aspire to, so curb your jealousy.
Would even blow the doors off Mike Spence on a Nantucket cyclepath.
"Someone doesn't like my expensive thing, they must be jealous!"
You've no idea what's in my garage - suffice to say, I'm about as jealous of your Tesla as I am of your washing machine.
I realise that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but good looking? Compared to what!?
USC70TSC024B021001.jpg
I actually have a Miele washing machine which you would be totally jealous of too.
And I do have an idea what's in your garage- probably a Skoda Yeti or a Seat Mii.
Good grief. Go jerk off over your washing machine if you're so proud of it...
Freud would have a thing or two to discuss with you.....
Oh listen to you bunch of whinging losers.
I drive a Tesla Model S and with the great tax breaks I get to drive a 100k euro car for just 3k per year, with performance that blows the doors off any other car on the road. Nothing about being an eco-warrior believe me!
As for sneaking up on cyclists, true up to about 25kph but above that the tyre and wind noise is the same as a normal car so it isnt an issue (unless the cyclist has earplugs in- very common here in Holland).
The poor passing attempt in the video has nothing to do with the car being electric, its the nob driving it.
Is that
Expatpat, Vice President in Charge of PR, Tesla Corporation?
From a selfish point of view, I'm a fan of electric vehicles just to reduce the exhaust fumes. I also like the idea of quiet vehicles - pedestrians shouldn't need to hear a vehicle in order to not be struck by it (though the iZombies may get a few surprises if they walk blindly into roads).
However, they do perpetuate the massive-box style of transportation which isn't so good for cities, but then electric scooters have their own issues.
I do wonder about the 'whole life' environmental costs of electric cars. I'm not presuming what the answer is, but batteries in general are a problem in a lot of different ways. Though these calculations always seem horrifically complicted - I guess you'd have to balance it against the costs of producing and distrubuting gasoline.
I don't think there's much doubt that if they become affordable that's what the majority will go for, as opposed to having to engage in any physical exertion. And the roads will continue to be dominated by badly-driven and selfishly-parked motorised vehicles and I'll continue to regularly mutter the c-word under my breath when cycling or walking.
Infrastructure seems a bit of a problem, though - I already see electric leads draped out of third-floor windows and across pavements. More motorist-lawbreaking that gets ignored.
I was harassed recently on Pitfield Street (a 20mph limit cycle "superhighway") by the driver of an electric car, for taking the lane. The instant response offered by an electric powertrain made it even easier to drive the car like a prat than an ICE model, the driver speeding up, cutting in front of me and brake testing much more easily than they'd be able to if driving your average ICE-powered car. I was actually quite taken aback by the way the thing (a BMW i3) built and lost speed, despite having driven one myself a few times.
Tragically, as they currently exist, electric cars just continue the paradigm of established internal combustion cars, heavy armoured over powerful vehicles that are for that reason inherently inefficient and hazardous to other travellers. Every watt hour of renewable generation capacity expended on electric vehicles is not available for substituting for fossil fuelled space, water heating and other power uses, hence it is not as carbon emission free as people would like to claim.
Electric cars are heavily subsidised in Norway with tax breaks available, and the Norwegians generate nearly all their electricity using Hydro power (Electricity in Norway is more expensive in the summer as the reservoirs are not as full) so they probably make slighty more sense (CO2 wise) over there than in the UK where we still burn a lot of carbon.
We hit 50% of UK electricity from low carbon/renewables last year so we're getting there.
I saw some figures recently suggesting an electric car in the UK has the same CO2/km as a very good hybrid once you consider manufacturing etc.
As our electricity supply gets greener and electric car manufacturing gets more efficient the numbers should get better every year.
Elon Musk is the PT Barnum of the automotive industry. Tesla are still losing £700m a quarter and the company was literally just subsidies at ones point.
Early adopters are generally either rich or stupid or both. You usually get the worst version of the tech at the highest prices. I remember my mate buying a 42inch plasma for some stupid amount of money. A few years later it was viewed as laughably shit and also worthless second hand. A bit like current older electric cars whose batteries may need replacing at great cost . I still think electric only cars are just a stop gap technology until something better comes along.
They make sense to anyone prepared to pay the premium as an early technology adopter. If a few enthusiasts had not spent fortunes on early flat panel TVs then the rest of us could not now buy ridiculously nice lcd panels for a few £hundred. TV might not be your thing, but the same argument holds for pretty much any modern technology including fancy carbon bicycle frames and components made from exotic alloys.
My brother has just taken delivery of a Tesla III. Yes it was expensive, but he generates all the power he uses from solar. Incidentally the performance is staggering, all the more so for being virtually silent.
As for being silent, I see this as a positive. I was actually pretty vexed when that legislation was recently announced about electric cars needing to make a noise. Surely that just plays into the idea that the driver is not responsible for making sure they don't run pedestrians etc over. If for some reason a driver needs to alert another road user to their presence then electric cars like any other have to have a horn. See highway code for details.
Electric cars suck. They do actually sneak up on you. I was out thinking I had nothing behind and there was one of those mini BMW things up my arse.
Apart from that i don't how they make any economic sense at their current price point and with nonsense like battery rental at £70 a month. I don't even spend £70 on petrol a month.
And neither do they save the planet, having a lifetime CO2 footprint between 80-109% of an ICE car. But there is some great marketing out there, persuading the gullible that they are so, so green. They don't do anything for congestion, tyre and brake dust, danger, or anything much apart from local pollution from exhaust gases.
If you only look at lifetime CO2 by assuming a worst case scenario for electricity generation, no recycling of batteries at the end of their life and ignore the environmental cost of extracting oil from the ground, refining it and transporting it to a fuel station before even putting it through your ICE.
Brake dust? Most electric vehicles make use of regenerative braking, so much less.
Reduction in local pollution? As in: Nitrous oxides, PM10 and smaller, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide and other exhaust gasses? That is hardly of trivial benefit considering the estimated 50,000 early deaths a year in the UK attributed to local air quality and the millions of people exposed to a lifetime of air pollution.
Tyre and road wear, congestion and drivers not killing other road users require different solutions. Those I will concede.
Maybe it is you being suckered in by the climate change deniers and their corporate sponsors.
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