Trying to Bring Car Chases to a Standstill
No more television programs interrupted to broadcast the latest Los Angeles car chase. No more freeways closed as police try to nab fleeing scofflaws, and no more pedestrians killed by speeding felons trying to elude capture. In fact, no more high-speed police pursuits, ever.
At least that’s the goal of a new technology demonstrated to astonished onlookers Tuesday in Redondo Beach during the California Peace Officers Assn.’s annual conference.
The device is cunningly dubbed High Speed Avoidance Using Laser Technology, or HALT. If implanted in cars, the small microsensor would allow police with a remote control laser gun to force motorists to a slow, safe stop from up to half a mile away.
“It takes all the fun out of chases, but it’s a good idea,” joked Gardena Police Officer Mark Wilson after watching the show. More seriously, he added: “Pursuits are the scariest part of your career. The people you’re chasing, they’ve got this thousand-pound machine, and they don’t take into consideration red lights or pedestrians or anything.’
The device was invented by Charles Gabbard, a retired engineer from Huntington Beach, whose car was swiped during a chase seven years ago. He was not injured, but that pursuit caused the death of two pedestrians. “I thought there’s got to be a better way to stop these pursuits,” he said Tuesday.
There were more than 6,600 police pursuits on California’s roads in 1998, 1,750 of which ended in accidents, said Ron Perry, chief lobbyist for Gabbard’s company, CHG Safety Technologies.
“If we get this thing implemented, it will mean an end to police pursuits,” Perry added.
But first, auto makers have to agree to implant the chips in their cars. And that is a big if.
Earlier this year, state Sen. Jackie Speier (D-Daly City) introduced legislation calling for all new cars in California to be implanted with such a chip by 2005. Her bill, SB 2004, is now tied up in the Senate Transportation Committee, facing sharp opposition from car manufacturers but heavily championed by the insurance industry and law enforcement groups, company officials said.
The chips are “definitely something we favor. Anything that would reduce accidents,” said Holly Staszel, spokeswoman for the Insurance Information Network of California, an industry group.
Redondo Beach police officers and representatives from CHG took to the streets Tuesday near the city’s pier with a shiny black Mercedes, a police helicopter and several of the laser guns. As officers from throughout California watched, the black sedan sped again and again around the corner with a police car in close pursuit.
Officers fired a laser gun from a car, from the air and finally from the sidewalk. Each time, the car’s taillights began to flicker and the auto slowed to 15 mph before sputtering to a stop. The device cuts off an engine for 20 minutes. Steering and braking are not affected.
“I was very impressed,” said J.P. McGinness, a sheriff’s deputy from Sacramento, who added that the new device seems safer and more effective than current tactics. “We’ve trained officers to ram people, and we put down spike strips that pop their tires,” he said. “We’ve bought a lot of tires for non-violators who accidentally ran over the strips.”
Ron Allen, assistant sheriff of El Dorado County, said his rural Northern California jurisdiction does not have many police pursuits, but he praised what he saw Tuesday. “It’s a great idea, once it becomes practical and cost-effective,” he said. “The problem is just getting them into the cars.”
In most cases, the sensor would be embedded near the license plate, giving officers something to aim at. “If they’re bad shots, they shouldn’t be police officers,” Phil Povey, a CHG official, said.
The laser guns will cost police departments about $1,500 each. To discourage theft, they will be biometrically engineered to operate only after recognizing the handprints of police officers. And in case they are stolen, Povey said, all of the guns will have geographic positioning systems so police departments can trace them.
Implanting the device into a new car would cost about $20, Povey said. Retrofitting cars already on the streets with the sensors would cost about $100.
“It’s about time someone invented something like that,” said Tina Gonzalez, a waitress who came out on her break Tuesday to see what the fuss was about. “I’ve wasted so much of my time watching car chases on the news. I hate them, but if one is on, I can’t help but watch it.”
