Car chase
Car chases may also involve other parties in pursuit of a criminal suspect or intended victim, or simply in an attempt to make contact with a moving person for non-conflict reasons.
Car chases are also a popular subject with media and audiences due to their intensity, drama and the innate danger of high-speed driving, and thus are common content in fiction, particularly action films and video games.
Generally, suspects who police spot committing crimes for which long prison terms are likely upon conviction are much more likely to start car chases.
[4] Since the 2010s, as the dangers of car chases become apparent, police have tested various alternative methods of tracking fleeing suspects without continuing to pursue them such as StarChase's GPS trackers[5] or the Grappler bullbar with a tire-catching net.
[7] On January 3, 1992, a lengthy pursuit in Southern California, involving a Volkswagen Cabriolet stolen by a suspected murderer, Darren Michael Stroh,[8] who was eventually killed by California Highway Patrol officers in a shootout, became the first police chase to be broadcast live on television, airing on three channels and preempting daytime programs on the station.
[17][18] One notable recorded police chase occurred when an M60 Patton tank was stolen by Shawn Nelson from an Army National Guard armory, on May 17, 1995.
Nelson went on a rampage through San Diego, California, with the massive tank crushing multiple civilian vehicles before becoming stuck on a road divider.
[31] The February 2005 Macquarie Fields riots occurred in Sydney, Australia after a local driver crashed a stolen vehicle into a tree, killing his two passengers following a high-speed police pursuit.
In 2007, the United States Supreme Court held in Scott v. Harris (550 U.S. 372) that a "police officer's attempt to terminate a dangerous high-speed car chase that threatens the lives of innocent bystanders does not violate the Fourth Amendment, even when it places the fleeing motorist at risk of serious injury or death."
In most common law jurisdictions, the fireman's rule prevents police officers injured in such pursuits from filing civil lawsuits for monetary damages against the fleeing suspects, because such injuries are supposed to be an inherent risk of the job.
[32] One particular hazard that is attendant to police pursuits is the problem of multiple law enforcement agencies becoming involved in a car chase that crosses municipal and jurisdictional boundaries.
In August 1984, the Dallas Police Department's Planning and Research Division, under the command of Captain Rick Stone, began crafting a policy that more than twenty (20) local law enforcement agencies could agree to abide by when car chases crossed their borders.
These car chases are rare and are almost always considered illegal due to the dangers of civilian vehicles, lacking any sort of warning device or authorization, pursuing each other at high speeds.
Therefore, it is common to use older vehicles that are 1–2 generations behind the current models on the market, since these can be second-hand acquisitions at low cost due to depreciation.
[48] As such, some films like Ronin, The Bourne Supremacy, The Kingdom, The Dark Knight, and Need For Speed, used live-action chases with minimal use of CGI, if at all.
[49][50] Many video games, often within the open world and racing genres, tend to contain, if not focus on, car chases of some sort, usually involving police.
Many of these chases are often heavily stylized, with police often ramming or even shooting suspect vehicles, or deploying dedicated "pursuit units" in performance cars.
