One area the pro-electric brigade is punting hard is safety, with recent (unsubstantiated) claims that Tesla models are the safest cars in the world. However, let me tell you, after a recent “second honeymoon” trip to Europe the facts just don’t add up when it comes to the reality of New World transportation.
Bicycles are great, but I’ve never been closer to getting knocked over than I was in Edinburgh, where the cyclists zoom along the city’s footpaths and walkways at enormous speed, so only basic instincts prevent you becoming the target of a 70kg student on a fast-moving steel machine.
Then on to the motorways on our trip to visit my roots in Yorkshire. Which were the vehicles that hogged the right hand lane the most, while travelling way below the speed limit? Yes, you’ve got it, Nissan Leafs, with seemingly a holier-than-thou attitude “I’m saving the planet, screw you”.
And on to the narrow twisting roads of the Derbyshire Peak District, where one 2km queue was headed by – you’ve got it, a new Mercedes electric SUV, complacently creating a mobile road block.
Then we flew to Paris. Oh boy, is it unsafe for pedestrians there!
Since I last visited this great city it has changed dramatically, and motorbikes and motor scooters dominate the roads. But they’re not the cute little machines we drove on our last visit to Raratonga – these ones roar around the city at high speed, ignoring all the speed limits.
The closest I came to being hospitalised was when one 500cc “scooter” slipped through between me and a car which had stopped to allow us to cross at the “green man” zebra crossing, actually touching my sleeve as it passed.
And what about the electric scooters? These are of the type you stand on and normally scoot along with your foot, except they have electric power, are completely silent, and zoom along the footpaths at high speed. Woe betide you if you pause for a moment to look at a statue and get in the way of one of these!
It’s all about give and take, I know, but this new age of anti-car, anti-petrol, and especially anti-diesel seems to be breeding a new class of road (and footpath) users who just don’t care about anybody else. And that attitude WON’T save the planet.
