Police save electric car driver after brakes failed Motorist feared he’d die or kill someone else in terrifying incident
ATERRIFIED driver feared he’d be killed after the brakes on his electric car failed. The drama unfolded after the Jaguar I-PACE malfunctioned on the eastbound carriageway of the M62 as Nathan Owen was travelling towards Eccles on Wednesday afternoon. The electric vehicle sped uncontrollably down the motorway reaching speeds of 90mph before police, using specialist tactics, brought it to a halt.
Now Ormskirk support worker Nathan has spoken of his terror saying he thought he could have died. The 31-year-old also revealed this was not the first time his car had gone rogue on a motorway.
Speaking to Mail Online, Nathan, from Bolton, said he was driving from his new job as a crisis support worker with children in Ormskirk at around 2.30pm when he tried to overtake another vehicle. Nathan, originally from North Wales, said: “The car literally just started speeding up. I couldn’t press the brakes.
“The speed was going towards about 100mph in the high 90s, going to 100. I thought this was a bit wrong. It came up on the dashboard saying there was a battery malfunction in my car. I kept trying to press the brakes but nothing was happening.”
“So the next thing I thought I should do was call 999 and tell them what was happening.”
Nathan added: “The car was in its own world - it just had no brakes. The worst thing about it is that it’s happened before.”
He said: “In the back of my mind, I was thinking I’m going to end up crashing the car, I’m going to kill myself or I’m going to kill an innocent person on the roads.”
Mr Owen spent the next 35 minutes surrounded by police cars at as officers from Merseyside Police and Greater Manchester Police used specialist tactics to ram the vehicle. He said: “It was just scary I was just hitting the back of this police officer.”
“I was hitting them at about 90mphs. I was still talking to the operator, and I was worried. I was thinking I could potentially kill myself hitting this police officer at 90, or I could kill him if he loses control.”
He said that every time he was hitting the police vehicle, the car was swaying side to side. He continued: “The police officers said they’d never come across this before and coming down the hard shoulder and the police being behind me, it was like something out a film.
“It was horrible, I was in the fast lane, police car in front of me, cars alongside me, normal passengers were just staring at me. I felt like a criminal like in a big police chase, that’s how it felt. It felt like Grand Theft Auto.”
The Jaguar was finally brought to a stop when the miles on the car started running out. Mr Owen continued: “I had 10 miles, 5 miles and then it said on the screen zero miles stop the car and then the car started gently slowing down and going to zero.”
“The police were saying on the phone they are going to drive off a bit further and they will stop and then I can roll into the back of the police car and stop the vehicle. I went into their car a few times, that was what was panicking me the most, I’ve never done that kind of before, I’ve never had a crash before. Hitting the back of the police car, I was panicking about myself and the police officer in case I hit him too hard or he loses control.”
Nathan said he ‘froze’ after the terrifying incident finally ended. He revealed a similar incident happened to him on December 23.
He said: “I was driving at 3am in the morning after I finished one of my previous jobs, it happened exactly the same, I had no control of the vehicle. At the time, it did speed up to about 120mph, so it was going pretty quick.
“I ended up phoning the police, the same how I did with this one. I managed to get the car into neutral after me pressing the buttons on the side of the I-Pace.”
“It didn’t work this time but last time I managed to get it in neutral so the car ended up stopping with the help of the police in front of me and behind me slowing down as well. The car then got recovered to Jaguar Land Rover in Bolton and within 24 hours I got a phone call saying they looked over the car and the cars fine and I should pick it up.”
Mr Owen said he also had another incident where his battery died while he was on the motorway last April just a month after he bought the vehicle. He said: “I was driving the vehicle and I had about 100 miles still left and I was literally just driving about 20 miles and I lost pretty much all that charge and car stopped in motorway and I got recovered - it took about 8 hours to recover the vehicle.
“Everything literally just shuts off. The wheels clamp up because its electric, I can’t take the handbrake off.”
Nathan said he would definitely not be getting a Jaguar or electric car again. He continued: “I just know I’ll never be getting into this car again. I just wish that I would have got help with it the first time I had the problems, and I didn’t just get given back the car.”
Jaguar Land Rover has confirmed it is investigating the terrifying incident as a priority. The horrifying incident unfolded between junction 11 for Birchwood and junction 12 for Eccles on the motorway.
All lanes were closed for a short while with traffic stopped as police responded to the incident. Two lanes later reopened, with a further two closed, causing major delays of almost an hour and congestion backed up ahead of rush hour.
‘The speed was going towards about 100mph in the high 90s, going to 100. I thought this was a bit wrong. It came up on the dashboard saying there was a battery malfunction in my car. I kept trying to press the brakes but nothing was happening’