I’ve seen loads of those FOX TV shows where some dumbass tries to outrun the cops but they always seem to catch the guy (or he dies). Obviously there must be a great deal more chases which they never show where the perp disappears into the night. Would anyone care to speculate what the percentage of successful getaways is?
My feeling is one could outrun the cops given the right situation. For instance, I’m a pretty damn good driver, as good as any cop if not better, and I usually don’t drive when I’m totally wasted, and I’ve momentarily got my hands on this cool car which is way faster than any cop car for sure. I’m enjoying driving it around town but should I ever get a cop behind me I really need to have some comfort knowing that, statistically at least, I will be able to outrun them.
Motorola can be jammed. Most contestants aren’t that bright or well-prepared though.
Dunno how long this’ll be up here, but… my high school chums all became cops. They say only LA has helicopters in the air basically around the clock, and that’s why you see so many chases in LA from a helicopter. My pals (in St Louis area) also say that they lose more people in the inner-city (congested) areas than on remote country roads or highways. The best way to get lost is to go somewhere where there’s a whole lot of other people on foot, and then abandon the car. They lose more people on foot than they do in cars. - HTH!
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An interesting article I read noted that chases increased as it became more and more common to televised them live.
“An interesting article I read noted that chases increased as it became more and more common to televised them live.”
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That is, in LA, I mean. Watching live car chases on television is very popular there; there’s a real question if allowing them to be televised encourages the behavior even more. Most other reasons suggested don’t hold up real well under scrutiny.
I would guess it’s very low. They will radio ahead and get more cars after you, block the road, or lay down spike strips. Also, just because your car is fast doesn’t mean it can handle it for long periods. You will also need heavy duty tires, brakes, suspension, steering, and cooling systems. I’ve been in a “fast” car at over 100 mph and you hit one little bump and it feels like the car will fall apart.
That said, it is possible. Like Doug said, get out of your car and your chances are better. Or, get on a crowded road and you can lose them easier or force them to back off (of course, odds of an accident go way up). Still, your chances in any event are low. They have all the equipment, training and tactics.
Someone I know, when they were about 20, won a car chase against a cop on the narrow hilly streets of central San Francisco. Basically this person (stupidly in retrospect) simply decided to make go for it before the cop seemed to realize that he was suddenly cast as the aggressor in a balls-out chase scene.
This person in very short order and while making a wide screeching turn came within about 1 1/2 feet of careening into a Muni bus full of passengers. But knowing the neighborhood like the back of the hand and being able to build up a decent headway in a hurry led to a vanishing act, then a crashdive into the first available parking space and a nondescript pedestrian getaway.
This person was very lucky that day and is definitely not a role model for macho, overconfident drivers. Car chases always put the lives of innocent passersby in mortal danger.
Which is exactly why a lot of police aren’t allowed to get into a high speed chase in a suburban area. Unless they’ve got a damned good reason to want to catch you, your chances are pretty good that simply upping the risk to civilians will cause the police to back off.
I don’t know about LA, but around Baltimore County the police use frequency hopping radios, mostly to deter people with scanners from what I hear. Frequency hopping radios, simply by the nature of the fact that they are constantly changing frequency, are much more difficult to jam than a regular radio.
Even police that don’t have these types of radios have radios with multiple channel capability. You are going to have to have one heck of a jammer to be able to block out numerous communication channels over a very long range of distance. I can’t think of an effective jamming device that would work from a getaway car.
My brother in law happens to be a cop. He went through special driving training for high speed chases. Even though you might think you are Jeff Gordon, chances are you don’t have a lot of experience on roadways at 100 mph+ and you are going up against a whole bunch of people specifically trained to outdrive and stop you.
I imagine your chances of getting away are pretty slim, but it would be interesting to see some statistics.
Have there ever been any surveys about how “popular” a car chase is? Besides the Nielson ratings, that is.
Thing is, when I lived in LA they would even preempt prime time programming with a car chase, so it’s not like anybody had a choice about what to watch, especially when the same car chase was being broadcast by multiple affiliates.
Got old truck, see chase coming my way. Screw up runner… Bwahahahahaha Watch idiot die, save innocent people, got ball bearings and oil bopttles to throw out in speeders path. Used 52 GMC to crash cement truck that would not stop speeding in little kid neighborhood. Come play in my yard. LOL We love idigits…
Today my roommate was driving home from BC on a narrow, winding mountain road when a car went wizzing past her on a double solid lane into a blind corner, passed a few people on the shoulder, passed a few more people by swerving into oncomming traffic, whiped around a corner, drove over a spike belt, started doing 360’s, slamed sideways into a truck that had been stopped, and SPLIT COMPLETELY IN HALF. The front had slid up the embankment, and the back had tipped over the precipice and was on the edge of a lake.
Traffic was stopped for 3.5 hours in both directions. Apparently the driver was OK, as were the family in the pick-up truck that he hit; however, I’m pretty sure with a little less luck, there would have been a bunch of dead people.
So, yah. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
Oddtunes, don’t get too comfie, then. You may have a fast car, but it had better have some serious balls, because most police cars have some serious horsepower, themselves. And while police do frequently cut off chases here in the U.S. due to department safety regulations, they invariably get your plate first, and a nice visual I.D. if possible. Even if you report that car stolen after they cut it off, you suddenly become a known commodity to the entire department, and you had better not fart while driving or they’ll pick you up for it. And once you run, they automatically have a good reason to continue the chase. You are asking to kill or get killed if you try it. Ask a guy in Milwaukee who recently killed a couple of people in a chase.
This sounds like just the sort of “reasoning” that gets you on the World’s Wildest Police Chases. Having a car that is “way faster” than a police car really doesn’t buy you much unless you’ve got a deserted straight highway. Going at high speeds through suburban/urban streets is almost impossible, at least without putting other people at serious risk. (Not only will getting in an accident pretty much terminate your chances of getting away, but if anyone gets injured, kiss the next 15 years or so of your life away.) Not driving when “totally wasted” implies that you are at least slightly wasted. That immediately puts two strikes against you because a) you’re not able to coolly calculate the cost-benefits of fleeing (virtually always a stupid idea unless you have an outstanding felony warrant – most people involved in HSC end up converting a misdemeanor into a world of serious hurt) and b) you’re driving impaired. So to sum up, if you’re not impaired, you wouldn’t do anything so stupid as to get involved in a high speed chase, and if you are impaired, you are very, very likely to screw up.
Finally, if your car is that souped up, it’s going to be very recognizable. Chances are, if you’re in a small town the area cops already know the vehicle and the driver. So fleeing is going to be futile anyway.
As for the absolute odds, well obviously that depends on the area. If you’re out in the boonies with one cop in 100 miles and lots of side roads, you’ve got a chance. If you’re in a car that can’t be traced to you and you can ditch it and blend into the crowd or into trackless woods, then you’ve got a chance (but you lose the car – hard to count that as a win). If you’re on a highway, your chances are probably vanishingly small – lots of patrol cars, few places to turn off, and lots of blocking traffic.
I don’t know if the policy has since changed, but in Loudoun County, VA, there was a strict rule against pursuit of motorcyclists who attempt to elude. There was a fairly popular biker bar just across the street from the courthouse there, and chases were not uncommon until bad things started to happen.
The reason the chasing stopped, according to my friend who did a few weeks of ride-along duty as a prospective officer-in-training, was because some rider correctly ascertained that he could temporarily elude the police by wrecking into the underbrush on the side of the road and dying a long and painful death. This supposedly occurred at the onramp onto Rte 15 South just outside of Leesburg, VA, ca. 1991 or 1992. He was found some time later by a road crew which was replacing the highway markers which his bike had taken out as he laid it down.
If you consider the results of such behavior a reward, it is in fact merely a reprieve, sands in the hourglass for you and possibly an unknown number of others. And if they lose you, many cops just pull over and wait for you to come back. Apparently, most runners do just that, probably because they get lost or off-track during the evasion.
If you’re shopping for a getaway car, I think you’d do better to look for handling than raw horsepower.
Police cars are pretty powerful (ever watch The Blues Brothers?), but if you’re near a lot of windy back roads, that power won’t mean anything when your car can take the curves at 65 and they have to slow down to 40.
Thanks to everyone for the tips! Here in north Sydney we’ve got myriad congested inner city roads which are maybe less than a mile away from long winding mazes of bush roads. So depending on the situation I think I can either ditch the car and blend in (as several of you suggested) or head out into the bush where I can outdrive the cops and disappear.
FWIW, I never said the car was mine, so no chance of plates getting traced back to me. And yeah the car is souped up big time and I’ve taken it out on the dusty back roads and it handles sweet! I’ve never seen them use a helicopter here in Sydney so that also gives me a great advantage! And yes mother, I promise not to drink and drive.
But back to my OP, I’d still like to see some statistics offered up on just how many folks do evade the cops in these situations. It’s got to be heaps more than those wildest chase shows, or even the cops, will own up to!