When police are after a suspect, they sometimes use the PIT maneuver to try and end the chase. At times it works just as prescribed but other times it goes awry quite quickly. In this case, it led to the officer smashing into a guard rail before ending up with a dead car on the side of the highway.
The video from the Arkansas State Police shows an officer exceeding highway speed limits by some margin to catch a Mercedes driver. The police need several minutes to finally catch up and as they do we see another officer attempt to spike the fleeing suspect. It’s unclear how successful that attempt was though because the suspect continues driving.
That’s when the dashcam-carrying officer moves in for the PIT and things go from bad to worse. We’ve come down on authorities for what some call needlessly dangerous and reckless pursuit tactics before. Even the data and third-party police oversight indicate that chases are likely overused. With that in mind, let’s switch gears to talk about why this PIT maneuver likely went wrong.
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The officer and suspect pass a motorist and just before the two reach additional traffic ahead, the officer drifts right to initiate the PIT. The contact happens and in just a moment or two, the officer is forced to the left, over both lanes of traffic, and into the guard rail. Somehow, he manages to keep the car pointed in the right direction and then gets back onto the road.
The patrol car has suffered some damage and the suspect drives away as the Charger limps to the right shoulder where smoke begins to seep from under the hood. Notice during the contact with the Mercedes that the Charger almost appears to lurch forward.
It seems likely that instead of contacting the rear three-quarter panel of the sedan the officer actually went wheel on-wheel with the Mercedes. We’ve seen what touching a rolling wheel on the highway can do to unsuspecting drivers’ cars and it would explain just about everything here. The contact would cause the front right tire of the police car to speed up and naturally drift to the left.
At high speeds, it could be violent enough that even a trained police officer might be incapable of catching the car before it left the road surface – but, in this incident, that’s just speculation. In any case, the officer avoided serious injury but the police will have to fix or replace the damaged Dodge.