10 Hilarious but Deadly Serious Reasons Why You Shouldn't Try to Outrun Police Cars

If you see and, more specifically, hear the screams the truck made while forcefully stopping from 50 to 0 mph in 0.2 seconds... you'll understand that this isn't something to trifle with. 

Then we have the Grappler Police Bumper which is exactly what it sounds like. You've most likely seen it in videos or real life, and hopefully, it wasn't being used on you.

Looking like a clothes dryer made out of straight jacket fabric, the Grappler's design was intended as a quick de-escalation tool that deploys at the front of the cop car. The vehicle then tries to attach it to the back wheel of the "bad guy's" car, rendering it useless.

During the entire process, the Grappler will remain attached to the police car bumper, so that should technically slow it down to a halt before anything truly awful happens. On top of everything, if the cops miss, the reload speed is 5 minutes, although, in a high-speed car chase across the freeway, five minutes could mean covering 12.5 miles or 20 kilometers, which is nothing to scoff at.

Further down the list, there's something so simple, so mindless—it's straight-out dumb but extremely effective. The mobile spike is basically a long stick with nails at the front end of the police vehicle that's meant to pop your tires. The problem with blowing out a tire is that it tends to flip over pretty violently if it's going 150 mph.

Next in line is something called the "Active Net Barrier," made by a company sophistically named... "Barrier1." According to its spec sheet, the modular net can be deployed (hydraulically) in less than two seconds, acting more like a barricade than a mere fishing net. It's mostly meant to stop vehicles at slow to moderate speeds and spans up to 80 feet or 24.3 meters long.

It can also deal with high-speed moving vehicles, but the problem is that the humans riding in them tend to stop existing in one piece after the extremely violent impact. At the end of the day, it is an immovable object. This wonder net can be reused and redeployed, making it even more scary.

Barrier1 also makes other stopping equipment, such as safety or high-security bollards, retractable barriers, crash beams and drop arms, vehicle wedge barriers, cable barrier systems, mobile vehicle barriers, and, of course, high-security gates. Most of these can be used by law enforcement agencies.

The X-Net from QinetiQ is another vehicle arresting system with great stopping power. However, compared to the matter-shattering force of the previous gadget, this spiked net has a less lethal approach. It simply wraps around the target's undercarriage, where it should stop the wheels from spinning.

The geeky engineers who designed it boldy claim that, "X-Net is the only man-portable, non-lethal vehicle arresting solution available today." It can be deployed in under 20 seconds, bringing the vehicle to a controlled halt. The X-Net 3T and 10T models are made for stopping cars weighing up to 3 and 10 tonnes, respectively. In the US, that would mean 3.3 and 11 tons.

The "Stop Stick StickBot" is a Call of Duty-like RC (remote-controlled) car that deploys spike strips. It's designed with a high profile, four wheels, and a middle platform, so it will still face the right way, regardless of whether it flips over. It's also good for off-road. Regrettably, the Stop Stick was only invented after police officers started losing their lives while trying to deploy these spike strips manually. Thanks to its 2.4 GHz wireless system, the RC device can be controlled from over 800 feet or 243.84 meters away.

Moving on, the Piranha is a subtle deflation tool that police officers simply place next to the stationary target's tires. It measures 3 1/2 inches or 8.9 cm and weighs 5.2 ounces or 147 grams. It's meant to deflate tires in five seconds without making them blow out. It can be used in many scenarios, such as checkpoints, traffic stops, DUI inspections, surveillance, ambushes, and drug raids. Any agency can handle them: SWAT teams, tactical units, detectives, officers, you name it.

The next gadget is part of Star Chase's High-Speed Pursuit Alternatives, like the GPS Projectile or Guardian-VX. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said this sort of GPS tracking could potentially eliminate dangerous high-speed chases through populated areas, saving lives.

The StarChase GPS Tag looks like a shotgun shell and updates every 3-5 seconds, allowing the police to monitor the suspects' cars... provided they don't pull over and simply remove the tag. More than 10,000 non-permanent, non-lethal tags have reportedly been deployed worldwide with an 85% apprehension rate.

Still on this matter, the Guardian-VX is a vehicle-mounted GPS launcher, which means no one has to get out of the window like in an action movie while holding a grenade launcher-looking weapon. The police vehicle equipped with such a system must align with the target car, aim, shoot, and hope it hits the target like Maverick in Top Gun.

The team over at the Dytastic YouTube channel did a great job of putting this list together, and they appropriately ended the video with a great twist. Unless they're "getting too old for this s**t," like Detective Roger Murtaugh from the Lethal Weapon series, the police are equipped with specially designed bad-guy-apprehending vehicles featuring V6 and V8 engines. We're talking serious horsepower and torque, not to mention the undercover cars.

There's also a tiny problem regarding the getaway car, singular. It will have to deal with the organized efforts of multiple police squads, interceptors, and other fun deployable units, gadgets, and traps.

Now, before we part ways, as a pro tip, the safest way you could ever outrun the cops in any sort of vehicle is in a Need for Speed game. Hopefully, that will be in the leaked Most Wanted remake, if it's still a thing.