Why aren’t there very many effective methods outside of spike strips to stop a suspects vehicle in a police chase? What about an EMP?
Edit: I should clarify that I mean stop a police chase safely without any risk of serious bodily injury or death.
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Mainly because they’re trying to do exactly as you said, avoid serious injury or death. There are many ways to stop a chase if you don’t care for the health of those being chased (or the public for that matter). The best approach while still minimizing injury will depend on the environment of the chase, and the car being chased. With cars being so different there can’t be a universal approach. This is even further highlighted when you think that a chase can happen in basically any environment. The police have had to identify approaches that work in the majority of cases as they don’t have the time or resources to cover every possibility. This means they’ve had to identify approaches that would be effective on the majority of cars, and in the most environments.
Most cars don’t have any weak points that are easy to capitalize on from the outside. In-fact they are basically designed to keep the people inside the vehicle safe from the outside world. The easiest way to control any car is from the inside, and the police aren’t in the car being chased. Attempts from the outside require force or precise targeting of weaknesses, and it’s those weaknesses that can differ vastly between vehicle type. We all know that with enough force a car can be stopped, at the cost of the lives of those inside. With the car already built to prevent damage to it’s passengers, the force required to disrupt a driver’s journey is likely increased. This means the police have to walk a fine line of force application, the range of which can sometimes be quite narrow. Therefore police generally try to target weaknesses of the vehicles they’re pursuing. Less force = less risk, generally.There are a few typically recognized weaknesses of road vehicles, such as tires, which is why you often see spike strips being adopted. It requires little to no force, and targets a weak point of the vehicle. With the adoption of smart vehicles we may see an introduction of smarter approaches to stopping chases, such as remotely controlling vehicles. This would once again be targeting a ‘weakness’ of the vehicles, and require essentially no force.
The procedures that are currently adopted are proven to have worked in many different circumstances, even if they aren’t perfect, they’re at least somewhat effective in the vast majority of situations the police encounter. Now, when you take away the necessity to minimize injury or death, most vehicles can be destroyed in pretty much the same ways, which opens many doors to stopping a chase, but I don’t think anyone wants that.
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