An all-encompassing subject, I'm referring to "other" drivers as well as EV drivers. A recent post by the EVangel brought this to my alleged mind. There's a pervasive attitude that driving in a reasonable manner causes irritation from all the other road users. Take this perspective, regardless of your source of energy, liquid or gaseous fuel or raw electrons. Consider also city buses, trash pickup, postal and other delivery vehicles when you make this consideration: You are traveling along a roadway, any roadway. Interstate, major surface road, backwoods trail. Because you are an attentive driver, as ALL other road users are, you noted that you are closing on a slower moving vehicle ahead.
What do you do? According to far too many media reports, you immediately go into rant mode and become severely irritated that such vehicles and drivers are permitted on the road. In some cases, there would be shouting, profanities, perhaps horn sounding. What do YOU do? I check my surroundings, ahead and behind, possibly and very likely to the sides as well. If traffic permits (multi-lane roadway, for example,) I prepare for a lane change and overtake the other vehicle. If traffic does not permit, I may have to prepare for a lane change and overtake the other vehicle after waiting a moment or two. In some cases, I will slow or stop. School bus with lights on, trash pickup, city bus taking up the entire lane, that I missed far enough back to change lanes early. It happens. Which driver perspective do you fit? If you're driving a middling-performance EV or don't care to abuse your pack, you may accelerate gradually (as I do) and your top speed may not reach the posted limit, because you can see that the light two blocks ahead is red or worse yet, just changed to yellow. Why punch it, only to have to hit the brakes, as did the driver who safely passed you to beat you gently to the traffic light? My Gizmo EV is a 52 mph top speed, tiny three-wheeled grocery-getter. I can pull 450 amps with the controller and 540 amps with the 3C pack I carry. Why should I? I drive 35-40 on surface streets. My 2002 Rav4EV can do 78 mph, but I won't get my usual 80-90 mile range from it at those speeds. I drive 35-40 on surface streets. My no-longer-used velomobile managed 20 mph on good days and that was it. My experience with other road users is they are not ranting and screaming and sounding horns. The other road users will pass when safe and almost always pass when on a multi-lane roadway. Exceptions such as today's cell-phone using driver coasting along six inches behind me at 30 mph on a four lane road are just that, exceptional. Yeah, right, and more common than not. The media has it wrong and has brain-washed too many people. It does the EV world no good to consider that a 40 mph EV won't do the job because it won't break the speed limit on an interstate highway. I don't take the Gizmo EV on the interstate, but I do drive the Rav4EV on one, at 5-10 mph below the posted speed limit. You know what happens? People go around me. Funny thing, I go around those drivers ahead of me traveling slower, too. My posting isn't going to change the media's ignorance, but maybe it will change some EV driver's understanding. /rant off fred -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20150202/18d39a70/attachment.htm> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
