Electric vehicles? They’re still dangerous, polluting lumps that kill and maim

IAM beginning to loathe the new smugocracy of people driving or riding electric vehicles. I cannot stand the way that they are so pleased with themselves, and expect the rest of us to love them. It is of course a good thing that people have begun to grasp that the petrol or diesel-driven motor car is the most ridiculous form of transport ever devised. These ugly lumps of metal, glass and rubber wreck the health of their users,

I SUPPOSE someone will ask me why I have not written about the Tory leadership contest. Well, why should I? While I have no time for Johnson, it was always obvious that his enemies had no credible alternative to him. Yet they continued with their suicide plan anyway, and it will end with Keir Starmer in Downing Street. If you ask me who is my favourite among the candidates, I will ask you in return: ‘What is your favourite disease?’ spreading back problems and heart disease. Even after a century of road safety measures, they still kill and maim far too many people and always will.

A worrying number of their drivers are obviously drunk or drugged. They pump filth and noise into the air. They make the roads unusable by children on foot or on bicycles. They cause handsome cities to be wrecked to make way for them and they poison and scar the countryside. They make us depend on horrible despots, who sit on top of the oil reserves of the world.

And they are economically mad.

People borrow money to buy these depreciating assets. And, having paid a fortune for them, they then leave them by the side of the road or in some hideous car park for 23 hours out of every 24.

But almost none of these problems is solved by switching to electric power. Yes, electric cars are quieter, but that only makes them more dangerous as people have come to link noise with speed. Otherwise, they continue to cause great clouds of pollution – except that it now comes from power stations instead of out of exhaust pipes.

As for the metal needed for their batteries, I have seen with my own eyes the horrible conditions in which this is grubbed out of the African earth by half-starved children, and I cannot see how anyone who uses such machines can have a clear conscience, or claim to be good. Anyway, they don’t work. Charging them is an almost impossible task, and if they ever become truly common, our creaking power grid will collapse under the strain.

As for electric bicycles, I am astonished that there is so little protest against these incredibly dangerous unlicensed motorbikes, as heavy as sin and regularly ridden at way above the supposed 15mph speed limit.

I can see why an 80-year-old might need a bit of assistance pedalling uphill. But these things are used by fit young people, who could perfectly well propel themselves. After 40 years of campaigning for cycle lanes segregated from motor vehicles, it pains me to see these things belting along such lanes.

As for e-scooters, now about to be fully licensed, it terrifies me to watch such a huge mistake being made. And the pain is made worse by the self-satisfied expressions on the faces of their riders, so often clad in head-to-toe black as they zoom along a pavement near you. Many will either kill themselves or somebody else, as these wobbly toys are inherently unsafe for their riders and the public.

I suspect the Department for Transport hopes that, if they become common, it will provide an excuse to cut bus services. I can think of no other reason why they have fallen so completely for such a bad idea. I have seen plenty of foolish fads before, but never one as daft as this.