I was watching a movie with a car chase where the police car following the suspect car was radioing the direction the suspect car was traveling. E.g. “Suspect is traveling north on Washington Street. Suspect just turned and is now heading east on Brown Street.”
Since it usually takes me some time to figure the four cardinal directions, I’m wondering how the police figure out the four points so quickly.
I look at the sun and figure it out from there. I doubt the police have time to figure out where the sun is during a car chase. Is there a compass in the car?
They’re local cops.
They know landmarks, and what direction they are heading. You could blindfold me and place me anywhere in Phoenix, and I could tell you what direction I was facing in seconds after removing the blindfold.
It might be harder in cities that aren’t laid out in a strict grid (e.g. - Washington, DC).
Police are usually familiar with the areas they patrol. Even when streets do not lead to a cardinal point, they do tend to go in the general direction. For example, Interstate 5 goes north-and-south. There are parts of it that go east-and-west for short distances, but it generally leads north-and-south.
As for surface streets; as I said, LEOs are familiar with their areas. To take a simple example, look at Lancaster, CA. Numbered streets go north-and-south, and lettered streets go east-and-west. So if a cop is chasing someone along Avenue L, it’s pretty simple to know whether they’re going west or east.
The M25 motorway around London, England completely circles the city. Traffic reports these days use clock and anti-clockwise instead of cardinal points as they do everywhere else.
I hope that a cop in close pursuit is not letting his or her attention wander over to a compass or GPS. There is nothing wrong with having and using equipment, but as others have noted, cops should already be familiar with their cities, (or counties or whatever). Most cities have conventions regarding how to describe the direction a street follows and the police would follow that convention. (No one is going to refer to Woodward Ave. in Detroit as running West Northwest or East Southeast during a chase. They will say “North” or “South” and everyone who hears them will know what they mean. Similarly, Euclid Ave. in Cleveland, east of University Circle, is still going to get the directions “East” or “West” even though, from that point to the suburbs, it is “really” running a bit North of Northeast/South of Southwest.)
How long does it take you to think of whether you’re turning right or left? North, South, East and West are just as easy if you use those terms every day. I’ve never had a problem with a familiar area.
Numbered highways are labeled east/west or north/south. You use what it is labeled at regardless of your current direction. One local highway does a bit of a fishhook but it labeled north/south but so that’s what you use even if you are going east, or at the end of the hook the opposite direction. For local roads you use the direction they are generally oriented.
I looked up ‘ancient eldritch’ and got lost on a red road somewhere.
I have driven round it many times and I can assure you that the anguish is not metaphysical. It is, however, preferable to driving through the capital city.
I did wonder if anyone would point out that a small part of that road is not actually motorway. That is the QE2 river crossing (bridge and tunnel) where it crosses the River Thames to the East.
I always keep track of compass directions in my head, as did my dad.
Hey, can I get paid to ride along and whisper directions to the cop who’s driving?
“Suspect is proceeding…”“West.”“West along Halver…”“Halverson Creek Parkway.” “Halverson Creek Parkway, turning…”“North”“North on…”“North on Seventeenth Street at the closed Buy’N’Sell Shop, but now it’s curving northeast where they’re going to build that mini-mall with a comic book store.”“17th.”
This can get rather confusing at times, however. There is a stretch of highway between Knoxville and Sevierville, TN where US Hwy 411 North overlaps US Hwy 441 South, and together they physically run east/west. So you can be driving west into the setting sun while travelling north on US Hwy 441 and south on US Hwy 411 all at the same time. It can blow your mind if you ain’t from around here.
When I was an EMT we almost never mentioned the word right or left. EVERYTHING was referenced by compass direction. The reason for that is it does not change. Depending on which way you are approaching an intersection you may be turning right or left. So rather than trying to figure out where they are you just tell them where to go (like “north”) and they will turn accordingly for their situation.
Some cities are also quite a bit easier to tell direction in than others. My wife lived in Tucson for quite a while, and they are literally laid out on a north-south, east-west grid. All you have to do is look at a street sign and you can tell by its name and the arrow indicating street numbers to know which direction you’re going.
The Seattle area, on the other hand… good luck. There’s no organization and few streets are straight for very long. But, even here, people who drive around a lot know the streets and the directions. You just get used to it when it matters to you.
My brother is a cop in a small town, but one laid out with lots of curvy, meandering roads and lots of cul-de-sacs. It’s a resort town with lots of vacation and retirement homes.
His training officer would have him drive on patrol, and randomly ask what the next side street was going to be, or what direction they were travelling, and didn’t stop doing so until all the answers were coming back correct. Such knowledge is expected to be second nature.
In Seattle, if you can keep track of where Puget Sound is, you can tell where West is. But you’re right about the streets. I always tell newcomers that the town was laid out by a tribe of drunken loggers, who only cared about getting chunks of tree to the mill. It wasn’t until after most of the drag marks became roads that anyone tried to plan a city.