4 ms·

police will chase in the US for really any reason, kinda dumb when they have your plates they can just mail you a fine john oliver did a whole thing on it http

police will chase in the US for really any reason, kinda dumb when they have your plates they can just mail you a fine john oliver did a whole thing on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8ygQ2wEwJw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8ygQ2wEwJw

AnthonyMouse 11mo ago
> kinda dumb when they have your plates they can just mail you a fine Except that the person trying to get away knows that too, so if all they're doing is buying themselves a bigger fine, why are they doing it? The answer to that could be because they stole the car, or because there's a body in the back, in which case mailing them a fine doesn't work.
- idle_zealot 11mo ago
  > The answer to that could be because they stole the car, or because there's a body in the back, in which case mailing them a fine doesn't work. Except it's almost never that. The answer is that people are stupid and impulsive.
  - AnthonyMouse 11mo ago
    There seems to be a lot of variance in the percentage of police chases that involve stolen vehicles but the numbers seem to be in the range of 10% to 70% and even the low end of that isn't particularly low. You also have the problem that if you steal a car and then run from the police the result is that they don't pursue you and send a ticket to the person you stole it from, that makes it a lot easier to steal a car, and then the percentage goes up.
domoregood 11mo ago
True, but chases involving stolen vehicles (a non-trivial percentage of all chases) means that mailing a fine to the registered owner wouldn't be a universal solution.
themafia 11mo ago
"I wasn't driving at the time. Someone took my car." There is generally no crime for owning a vehicle used in a crime. The violation belongs to the _driver_ and to no one else. Burden of proof can be extreme in US courts.
- dns_snek 11mo ago
  You don't need to be chasing them on the road. Attach a GPS tracker to the car and follow it with drone, collect surveillance footage and arrest them once they come to a stop.
  - themafia 11mo ago
    They do have GPS dart launchers and other systems. They're fairly unreliable. It's difficult for the lead driver in a chase to deploy accurately and cars are typically dirty enough to make most adhesives ineffective particularly when deployed at highway speeds. A hoodie is enough to defeat the drone surveillance, and regardless of what facial recognition technology you use, a jury still has to buy the output of that system. For drones with less than a 6 foot wingspan that don't require a runway you've got maybe 30 minutes of flight time at a top speed of 30 miles per hour. So unless you know where they're going already you're not going to be able to effectively deploy it in the time necessary to capture them and you can't loiter long enough to track them with infrared. The helicopter is an insurance policy. When you have a bunch of marked units doing twice the speed limit on a long enough chase they're going to hit something. Those crashes are devastating and lead to eye watering settlement amounts. The helicopter can safely chase most vehicles at almost any speed and the risk of them crashing with any civilian or even civilian property is effectively zero.
mschuster91 11mo ago
> kinda dumb when they have your plates they can just mail you a fine thing is, in Germany and many other European countries there's a mandate to register your place of residence with the authorities in a timely manner (i.e. 2 weeks after moving in). Americans and Brits don't have that, so "mail them a fine" is most likely going to result in the letter not arriving where it should.
- inferiorhuman 11mo ago
  I can't speak to the UK but in California there are various rules around updating vehicle registration when you move. Enforcement is pretty lax unless you drive something with exceptionally high registration fees. There's strong wording about updating voter registration when you move, but I doubt there's much in the way of actual law. If there is it's basically never enforced as far as I can tell.
imalerba 11mo ago
There's a newer video more on topic of police chases https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVFXUkFx5Y8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVFXUkFx5Y8

AnthonyMouse 11mo ago

> kinda dumb when they have your plates they can just mail you a fine Except that the person trying to get away knows that too, so if all they're doing is buying themselves a bigger fine, why are they doing it? The answer to that could be because they stole the car, or because there's a body in the back, in which case mailing them a fine doesn't work.

idle_zealot 11mo ago
> The answer to that could be because they stole the car, or because there's a body in the back, in which case mailing them a fine doesn't work. Except it's almost never that. The answer is that people are stupid and impulsive.
- AnthonyMouse 11mo ago
  There seems to be a lot of variance in the percentage of police chases that involve stolen vehicles but the numbers seem to be in the range of 10% to 70% and even the low end of that isn't particularly low. You also have the problem that if you steal a car and then run from the police the result is that they don't pursue you and send a ticket to the person you stole it from, that makes it a lot easier to steal a car, and then the percentage goes up.

domoregood 11mo ago

True, but chases involving stolen vehicles (a non-trivial percentage of all chases) means that mailing a fine to the registered owner wouldn't be a universal solution.

themafia 11mo ago

"I wasn't driving at the time. Someone took my car." There is generally no crime for owning a vehicle used in a crime. The violation belongs to the _driver_ and to no one else. Burden of proof can be extreme in US courts.

dns_snek 11mo ago
You don't need to be chasing them on the road. Attach a GPS tracker to the car and follow it with drone, collect surveillance footage and arrest them once they come to a stop.
- themafia 11mo ago
  They do have GPS dart launchers and other systems. They're fairly unreliable. It's difficult for the lead driver in a chase to deploy accurately and cars are typically dirty enough to make most adhesives ineffective particularly when deployed at highway speeds. A hoodie is enough to defeat the drone surveillance, and regardless of what facial recognition technology you use, a jury still has to buy the output of that system. For drones with less than a 6 foot wingspan that don't require a runway you've got maybe 30 minutes of flight time at a top speed of 30 miles per hour. So unless you know where they're going already you're not going to be able to effectively deploy it in the time necessary to capture them and you can't loiter long enough to track them with infrared. The helicopter is an insurance policy. When you have a bunch of marked units doing twice the speed limit on a long enough chase they're going to hit something. Those crashes are devastating and lead to eye watering settlement amounts. The helicopter can safely chase most vehicles at almost any speed and the risk of them crashing with any civilian or even civilian property is effectively zero.

mschuster91 11mo ago

> kinda dumb when they have your plates they can just mail you a fine thing is, in Germany and many other European countries there's a mandate to register your place of residence with the authorities in a timely manner (i.e. 2 weeks after moving in). Americans and Brits don't have that, so "mail them a fine" is most likely going to result in the letter not arriving where it should.

inferiorhuman 11mo ago
I can't speak to the UK but in California there are various rules around updating vehicle registration when you move. Enforcement is pretty lax unless you drive something with exceptionally high registration fees. There's strong wording about updating voter registration when you move, but I doubt there's much in the way of actual law. If there is it's basically never enforced as far as I can tell.

imalerba 11mo ago

There's a newer video more on topic of police chases https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVFXUkFx5Y8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVFXUkFx5Y8