Tagging Devices To Aid In Car Chases

kthejoker writes "ABC News is reporting that a company called StarChase has invented a device that will allow police teams to 'tag' cars involved in dangerous chases. The device is the size of a golf ball, can be launched via an air-powered shooter attached to police vehicles, and uses a "highly efficient" glue to stick to cars. From there, it transmits its GPS position to a central monitoring station."

Why Only Police?

[twiddlingbits]

Make these available to everyone. When you see someone being an idiot or asshole driver, not just the aggravating ones, but the really stupid ones you pull this out, and tag them. After about 3-4 "tags" the cops can pull them over and give them a "asshole" ticket. Even better would be if these tags had a memory in them that recorded the time and GPS coordinates of the event you tagged them for. Maybe even allow selection of event types such as speeding, reckless driving, drunk driving, blocking traffic, too slow, etc. But I guess this would be handing over the cops job to the citizens and you know we are not law enforcement trained so we wouldn't know a violation, and a lot of innocent people would be getting "harrassed"for something the didn't do ;)

This article is a year old!

[sotweed]

Surely there should be some real experience to report by now, rather than just a press release from the manufacturer...

Why unglue when smashing will work?

[Vellmont]

Regardless of whether fleeing drivers realize they have been tagged, it's unlikely that individuals could unglue the dart.


Delicate electronics don't tend to survive being hit with a hammer. You don't have to get it off the car, all you have to do is disable it. I'd be curious to see how smash proof this thing is.

Re:Why unglue when smashing will work?

[Troed]

I'm much more interested in if the police help owners of erroneously tagged cars remove the "super glued" device again, without leaving any marks whatsoever on the paint job.

vehicle tracking

[DarkClown]

I recently did work at a company that sort of competes with onstar - the field is referred to within the industry as 'telematics' apparently. Anyway, it was kind of interesting, drivers could put their cars into a theft recovery mode' where in addition to reporting gps it would also kick the cell phone on in a stealth mode where operators could hear what was going on in the car and coordinate with law enforcement. One time when I was there one of these was going on and the operator was on the phone and could hear the siren as the police approached, and was able to tell them 'no, it sounds like you're getting further away from them' when the cop car took a wrong turn or something. Pretty neat.
Apparently the legal department of the place spent the majority of their time fighting off law enforcement from getting info from the service to track suspected drug dealers or whatever for agency requests.

The logical answer to that: GPS jammer

[gd23ka]

Okay... that just makes the case once more for the GPS jammer, a device that emulates GPS signals and fools every GPS receiver in its vicinity into thinking it is located near the south pole. Of course the car is still trackable by triangulating the location beacon. Of course a GPS jammer like that would be a dangerous thing to have and I'm thinking of here is what if someone happens to put that on a plane. I fly myself so that's a scary thought.

Not every city has a helicopter...

[m0ng0l]

I kept seeing a recurring theme throughout the posts on this device (and I haven't read the article yet), in that police should chase the criminals with helicopters. Great idea, but a lot of cities and towns don't have, or can't afford, or don't have the facilities for a helicopter.

There are also many ways in which a helicopter can be either avoided, or at least forced to drop far enough back to give you a better chance to lose it. Going near a major airport comes to mind. A city with many tall buildings (downtown New York or LA comes to mind) would make the helicopter less effective.

The way I could see police using this device, is tag the car, then "let" them get away/out of sight. Using the GPS, keep a group of patrol cars in a "box" around the suspect, and eventually, he/she will stop somewhere. At that point, move in. Best case, everybody wins. The cops get the criminal, the vehicle is minimally damaged, and few if any civilians get hurt. Worst case, the cops get the car back in good shape, and again, few if any civilians get hurt. Truthfully, I believe the cops would much prefer fewer chances of civilian injuries versus getting the criminal in custody, and not just because of the lawsuits.

Likely, most chases start when the criminal does something to attract the attention of the police, who then do what they are supposed to do: try to catch them. The problem with backing off, is that once the chase is on, they get fixated on stopping them. It seems a (very loosely) similar situation would be when one is working on a project or program, and is cruising along, try to stop... One big difference, which I'm sure someone would point out if I don't, is writing code isn't going to hurt anyone.

Stop and think for a moment, too, what would happen if the police *never* chased. Why bother doing anything even remotely near the speed limit? Streets are too corwded, hit the sidewalk at 60mph... Traffic signals would be less than "suggestions"....

At least if people think there's the possiblity of a cop, or several cops, chasing, and likely stopping them, they're more likely to simply pull over. With the obvious exception of criminals....

Re:Not So Easy

[Old Spider]

The article doesn't say anything about that. However, I would advise against having a partner in the vehicle. You see, the reason the police in the US stopped using partners like that is because having two people in a hightened state (the adrenalin rush) causes them to experience a sort of tunnel vision. They become less inclined to keep sharp on the situation and instead fall prey to group hysteria. The obvious solution was to keep other officers out of a squad car so that officer can concetrate and keep things 'icy'. If you've ever watch the television show 'COPS', notice how the officers are reacting after a big chase. They're hyper and need time to calm down. Imagine how much more difficult it would be in a patrol car when two people are like that. Driving the vehicle as safely as possible under those circumstances would be greatly reduced.

That's not saying police officers aren't trained to handle that kind of excitement. They certainly are, but removing an extra source of distraction keeps officers in a vehicle from losing control over themselves and ultimately the situation.

Spear Not Such A Wicked Idea

[Somegeek]

The potential for someone getting hurt with an electrical disruption device (especially a 2 foot spear!) is much higher. This is passive so it doesn't involve any risk to those in the fleeing vehicle. If someone is driving at 100mph it might actually be more dangerous to just shut their vehicle off and have them lose control at that speed. Plus, it wouldn't have any affect on pre-computer vehicles, (ok so not a lot of those speeding around....)

Re:Wicked Idea

[VagaStorm]

1. Fiering a spear on a car doing 100 mph in trafic is rather dangerous.
2. Why would you need a spear when you could just use a microwave gun http://www.abcnews.go.com/Technology/FutureTech/st ory?id=538452&page=1 [go.com]

This leads me to belive this devise is realy most usefoull in cases where you whant to follow the car without stoping it.

Saw this on a TV show

[Anonymous Coward]

They use one of these in episode 8 of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex to track and follow some criminals who are getting away through crowded down-town traffic. Nice to see some things from Sci-fi coming into reality.

RF Jamming

[nurb432]

So you just have a jammer in the car before you commit a crime. Problem solved.

Re:Wicked Idea

[keraneuology]

There is a device already deployed (though not widely) that is placed in the road and has what is essentially a wire sticking straight up. When the car drives over this gizmo the wire delivers a hefty spark to the car disabling it. I couldn't find a link/photo in 10 seconds of google so I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader. But it is already out there and works on newer cars. (Older cars without electronic fuel injection, power windows and LCD TVs (and yes, I'm trying to be mildly funny here) aren't are vulnerable to a simple spark and are harder to stop).

Re:Wicked Idea

[Dausha]

"Once your engine stops, you will no longer have a power steering pump, which means that you won't be able to whip around a corner with one finger on the wheel, but you will still be able to steer and bring the car to a safe stop. The same goes for brakes, you won't have power assist so you will have to use some muscle and push that brake peddle down, but you will still be able to stop/slow the vehicle."

I beg to differ in one regard. You are seriously underestimating the effects of power assist. By way of example, I would suggest you go out to a large, empty parking lot, accelerate to about 35MPH or so, and turn off the car. Now, you will retain some power assist, but only until the brakes have been used. Simulate some turns. You will find that the brakes become essentially unresponsive before you stop, although you will retain some turning.

About twenty years ago, when I was a teenager, I would screw around with my car by finding out what would happen if, for example, the engine died. I got pretty good after a while. There was a hill about a mile from my house that I could speed up on and then turn off the car (shifting into neutral)--and coast all the way to the garage. Of course, that meant I had to climb two hills, and conduct several turns. I had no brakes, but by the time I got to the garage I was only going about 5MPH, so I could get it to stop.

Every once in a while I remind myself of the essential helplessness we have in modern US cars by doing what I suggest to you above. When I had a '69 VW Beetle, it was no worries--just an overpowered go-cart. Now nowdays.

Re:Wicked Idea

[Kadin2048]

Someone going 100 miles an hour while trying to evade the police is probably going to end up wrapped around the nearest immovable object

  regardless of what you do.

It's all about the timing. If you can get them to stop moving when there's nobody else around, even if it results in them crashing, then I think it's perfectly acceptable to do so. Especially if it prevents them from getting into an area where there are more bystanders that they can kill when they eventually do wipe out.

If you've ever watched any videos of car chases, or talked to people who have been involved in high-speed pursuits, a very high percentage of them seem to end in bad accidents. I don't know what the statistics are on bystander injuries, but a system that could lock the steering and render the car uncontrollable -- even if it was guaranteed to cause it to crash -- would still be useful, if it could be used to end the pursuit quickly and far away from uninvolved people.

As far as I'm concerned, once you've decided to begin a high-speed chase, your life is forfeit. By driving 100 MPH down a street and doing any of the other sorts of things that people do when they're running from the cops, you endanger other people. When you show that much disregard for the lives of others, the police have a responsibility to do whatever it takes to stop you, regardless of whether you live through it or not.

Re:Wicked Idea

[mysidia]

See the article EMP Protection [aussurvivalist.com], in particular:

Another "myth" that seems to have grown up with information on EMP is that nearly all cars and trucks would be "knocked out" by EMP. This seems logical, but is one of those cases where "real world" experiments contradict theoretical answers and I'm afraid this is the case with cars and EMP. According to sources working at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, cars have proven to be resistant to EMP in actual tests using nuclear weapons as well as during more recent tests (with newer cars) with the US Military's EMP simulators.
One reason for the ability of a car to resist EMP lies in the fact that its metal body is "insulated" by its rubber tires from the ground. This creates a Faraday cage of sorts. (Drawing on the analogy of EMP being similar to lightning, it is interesting to note that cases of lightning striking and damaging cars is almost non-existent; this apparently carries over to EMP effects on vehicles as well.)