Cop stop at 1 AM

[bwilson4web]

Hi,

So headed home about 1 AM in the morning after running my wife's dogs, I decided to pick up some tocos for my wife, her dogs, and me at a local Toco Bell. With a bag full of hot tocos, I took the back roads home only to be stopped by a cop just as I was planning to make a left turn. He said,

• "Sir, I know it is after midnight and the school is not open yet but that road has a 25 mph speed limit."

This is the route from Toco Bell to where I was stopped:

Our current speculation is this very young cop was assigned security duty at the construction site when a white BMW i3-REx ran down the road in a hurry to get hot tocos home. I'd made the sweeping turn, again wasting no time, and about to make my left turn when he finally caught up and turned on his lights.

I rolled down the window and turned on the cabin lights and my wife's two dogs came up to give me support (and lick his hand if offered.) Very friendly dogs. Well he wasn't configured for a speed trap and by the time he caught up, I was already stopping and ready to make my turn. The cop had no evidence beyond seeing a great white BMW scampering down the road. After the warning, he left and I was soon home. But this highlights a 'moral hazard' of both our BMW i3-REx and Prius Prime Plus when running EV.

In ordinary hybrid or gas mode, we save money by driving efficiently: careful warm-up, modest speeds, and using most fuel efficient routes. In contrast, EV mode is half the price of gas in Huntsville so I've become more like my fellow drivers: (1) speeding or stopped, and (2) choosing fastest route, not the most economical. There in lies the moral hazard . . . in EV mode, I drive like the rest of the *ssholes on the road.

Bob Wilson

 

[i3an]

One factor is perception of speed. When an i3 is traveling in a convoy it's speed is perceived as the same as the herd, but an i3 on its own appears to be going faster than it actually is, because it is so short and relatively tall. An average car will be seen to pass a stationary object and its speed will be guesstimated, but the much shorter i3 at the same speed will pass the same object perceptively quicker and will thus appear to be moving faster. Notice how Smart cars always seem to be zipping about but land yachts appear to be lollygagging? (There must be a polysyllabic compound word for this.)
Anyway, probably best not to try and explain this to a rookie Southern cop at 1 AM.