Our second run in with police in Europe. This time in France.

After exploring the gardens around the Palace of Versailles, in the evening we drove through the southern suburbs of Paris towards the accommodation we had booked earlier that day.

The navigation said to take an exit in 300m, but there were two close together, and I mistakenly took the one, which took us back in the wrong direction, through a low clearance long tunnel with a €12 fee., adding another hour to our trip. This was not going well.

We exited the tunnel, back in the suburbs, driving through Versailles. Slow traffic, single lane in each direction. We could hear a siren somewhere getting closer. Suddenly, there was a police car on the wrong side of the road heading straight for our rental Tesla. In addition to flashers and sirens, they started flashing high beams. We stopped, checked rear vision cameras and mirror, and slowly reversed to the side. Bang! We hit something. We felt and heard it. “Shit shit shit” I said as I immediately thought of the €2000 excess that would soon be billed to us. It must be bad. It was a significant thump. Now we could see the car we hit, behind us. It was virtually invisible through the Tesla Model Y’s tiny rear window, which also seems to be tinted. Not great at night.

I hit the save recording button on the Tesla screen, so I’d have a record of the last ten minutes of dash cam, from multiple cameras. Unfortunately, the UFODrive rental company doesn’t give us access to the glovebox, so we couldn’t copy the video from the USB drive. But I later recorded it screen to camera onto my iPhone.

We couldn’t pull over there, in the midst of all the peak hour traffic. We drove slowly forward, looking for options. A third car soon pulled up beside us, with the lady driver politely telling us that the car behind (which we’d hit) wanted us to pull over. We explained that we were trying to find somewhere. We turned off, around the block, and eventually pulled over in front of a garage door. We hopped out to chat to the two drivers. I gave my sincere apologies, and we all acknowledged the police car situation. Through a mix of interpreted English and some French, we were all relieved that we were level headed and calm.

Now for the expensive examination of the cars. We all started looking… but no damage whatsoever! We were incredulous and said to each other “but it was a big thump”. The other driver checked their lights, just to be sure. Wow. So fortunate.

Now, off to find somewhere to eat, and head to our accommodation, still a fair way off.

Charging:

We did pass a few EV chargers along the way, but we planned to charge when we’re having dinner, so the added time for us to charge should add only a few seconds to our trip.