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  #11  
Old May 3rd 07, 12:39 AM posted to rec.autos.makers.ford.mustang
Joe Pfeiffer
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Posts: 433
Default More power to the police in high speed pursuit

There are at least three good questions that I've seen about the
chase, only one of which was addressed in the decision:

1) artifically low speed limits to raise revenue. Completely
irrelevant to the case, sorry. I don't care if the limit was 15
(we have 15mph school zones on 40mph roads around here), when the
lights come on, you stop. If you're on a suspended license (the
kid in the case was), you make damn sure you don't do anything
to get stopped for -- not driving at all being a really good
choice, and setting your cruise control for speedlimit-1 being a
poor second. Speeding on a back-country road is somewhere near the
bottom of possible choices. Haven't heard if he was drunk; if he
was, that would move it all the way to the bottom.

2) should the cops have chased him? If a third party had been injured
in the case, that would have been a really good question. All I've
seen about the case gives the impression that it was just a speed
stop; if so, there aren't many jurisdictions that would allow a
high-speed chase, as it raises the bar too high for a minor
offense. But no third parties were injured, so this one wasn't
addressed either.

3) should they have nerfed him? How could anybody watch the tape and
conclude otherwise? At that point, he was using his vehicle as a
deadly weapon, and had to be stopped. Looking at the lights he
ran, the vehicles getting out of the way, and the little trip
through the roadblock, they should have stopped him much earlier
than they did. A spiked board back at the roadblock would have
been a much better way, however (I haven't seen any claims that
that was tried).

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