Most epic slow-speed police chase ever (video)

[ Video Link] This video has it all: a giant truck carrying tons of lumber, a manic suspect, a maudlin news narrator (added after the fact) intoning cliches, cops shooting guns, and lots of fire and 'splodey stuff.

It's weird how something like this would be terrifying and tragic if you were there or someone you loved was affected, but it's the stuff of lulz in YouTube form now. So surreal.

(via Joe Sabia)

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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http://www.facebook.com/dylanfogle Dylan Fogle

Its amazing how much more dangerous police make situations…
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=749833892 Florian Braun
  
  It occurs to me that if they had simply monitored where he was going and waited for him to run out of gas there would have been minimal injuries and little destruction, but you know, that would just not be nearly as fun…
- Henry Pootel
  
  Not to mention someone driving a flaming truck dumping lumber on the road and almost hitting a school bus. He had little to do with the situation I’m sure. Idiot cops!
  - eldritch
    
    Did you miss the part where the police shot out the rear tires, causing the fire to begin with? Or the part where the lumber, which was only on fire because of police action, fell off the truck because the driver was attempting to flee from, and slow the pursuit of, the police who, may I remind you, were SHOOTING at him?
    
    Guns escalate situations. The moment a gun enters an equation, everyone is put into more danger. People take bigger risks when bullets start flying. People make bigger mistakes.
    
    How might the situation have ended differently if the police cars gave up direct pursuit and one of the helicopters followed the truck instead? Why not set up a roadblock ahead of the suspect? Why not use heavy vehicles to box the truck in and force it to a stop? Or if you’re going to bring deadly force into the equation, why use handguns to shoot out tires when you could use an anti-material rifle to shoot out the engine? Clearly shooting out the tires didn’t do anything to help end the chase, and in fact made matters worse. But shooting out the engine would have ended it immediately.
    - BarBarSeven
      
      Apparently the police are always wrong & make all situations worse. Who knew!
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        Some places don’t allow police chases because they tend to encourage the chasee to go 120 mph on city streets while mowing down pedestrians.
    - http://profile.yahoo.com/CRV3YKP2OHBB3IBNXZA6W5VVA4 Adam
      
      I don’t know if I should take your comment seriously or not. Anti-Material Rifle eh? I don’t know what kind of world you live in, but not using deadly force in that situation would have been foolish by the cops. He was the biggest vehicle on the road making it impossible for “heavy” vehicles to box him in. Setting up a road block would result in him either running over the blockage causing more damage, or simply turning around as you saw him do several times. It seems you’re stating that the police were the cause of the damage that took place, which of course, isn’t true. It’s because of their action the pursuit was even brought to a hold!
    - Michael Hoss
      
      The problem with that (following the truck, setting up roadblocks farther down the interstate, forcing him to stop) is, who knows what the truck driver is thinking, for all they know he might be wildly drunk and decide to ram his truck into a school building. or a nearby gas station causing an explosion and more fatalities. Granted it wasn’t the prettiest take down, but had the truck driver not been in complete disobedience to the law, none of the events would have taken place. In which I’m sure you would continue to tell everyone just how stupid the police are because they didn’t do this or that. I think we demonize the people that help us out entirely too much, but here’s the thing, no one can see into the future, and no one makes perfect calls 100 percent of the time. In reality who knows how much worse it could have really been.
http://www.karljones.com karl_jones

It’s weird how something like this would be terrifying and tragic if you were there or someone you loved was affected, but it’s the stuff of lulz in YouTube form now.

Not so weird — crowds have enjoyed the sight of their neighbor’s house burning since, well, the Renaissance that I know of … and as for a sack full of cats set ablaze for amusement, that shit goes on to this day.

Not you and me, of course, but somebody takes pleasure in disaster.
- xian
  
  wut?
- BarBarSeven
  
  You think Richard Scarry’s “Busytown” is all fun & games, but replace the hippos, cats, pigs & dogs with humans & all those hijinks are suddenly acts of terror.
- DewiMorgan
  
  Or earlier: fiddling as Rome burned.
Garnett Schuyler

Sounds like they hired Troy McLure’s inept cousin to do the narration.
- Dr_Wadd
  
  Zapp Brannigan?
petertrepan

Not the point, I know, but that was an impressive U-turn.
http://www.facebook.com/danhuby Dan Huby

I think this is an episode of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World’s_Wildest_Police_Videos
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=514252997 Dougald F Lamont

To add to the drama, Fox always added a fake omniscient narrator pretending to be in the helicopter, adding details he couldn’t possibly know. It didn’t matter where the chase was taking place – L.A., Chicago, New Orleans – it always had the same guy in the helicopter.
http://www.facebook.com/david.aubke David Aubke

Pretty sure the “news narrater” is just part of the show – i.e. fake.
- exile
  
  Absolutely.
  And post production sound of this calibre is for cartoons, not news.
  - benher
    
    Ah, perhaps you missed that little “Fox” logo up in the corner ;)
EH

If this guy was a banker, he’d be out of custody by that evening with a $50 ticket.
- http://twitter.com/sqlrob Rob
  
  Why do people always exaggerate on things like that? You think he’d really get a $50 ticket?
  
  Let off with a warning.
  - DewiMorgan
    
    A warning? Not even that, and just think of the damages he’d be claiming!
swankgd

Every bit of audio (narrator, helicopter reporter, sirens, tire squeal, “burning sound”). All 100% added by the World’s Wildest production. That show could have been good, but the complete fakery ruins it every time.
- kobrakai
  
  You mean you can’t really hear the flames from 700 feet up in a helicopter? Shocked, I am.
- hymenopterid
  
  But imagine how good it would have been if the narrator had to make all the sound effects with his mouth, like that guy on “Prairie Home Companion”.
  
  —He slams into the guardrail. screee-SMASH! But the cops are right on his tail. WEEE-OOH-WEEE-OOOH. His stolen pickup is no match for their crown vic interceptors. VROOOM WAAAHHHnnnguh.–
  - Ramone
    
    Rest in Peace Tom Keith.
- Neill “Dire” Mitchell
  
  Whenever they have UK chase footage they always over-dub a quaint “Nee-Ner” siren I haven’t heard since the ’70.
http://www.facebook.com/magnus.redin Magnus Redin

What was wrong with the truck driver?
- BarBarSeven
  
  The $25,000 question left unanswered.
ZikZak

And there goes the Challenger, being chased by the blue, blue meanies on wheels. The vicious traffic squad cars are after our lone driver, the last American hero, the electric centaur, the, the demi-god, the super driver of the golden west! Two nasty Nazi cars are close behind the beautiful lone driver. The police numbers are gettin’ closer, closer, closer to our soul hero, in his soul mobile, yeah baby! They about to strike. They gonna get him. Smash him. Rape… the last beautiful free soul on this planet.
http://www.facebook.com/postelwait Cameron Postelwait

just another typical day in Liberty City.
planettom

That’s John Bunnell doing the after-the-fact narration on WORLD’S WILDEST POLICE VIDEOS.

Note the FAMILY GUY spoofs, which got John Bunnell to do the narration:
STAR WARS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVJcZNFaJ90
FLINTSTONES: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5LcE6c_5Uo
- hassan-i-sabbah
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD39tzmKAiU
LeftyX

…and there’s hamburger all over the highway in Mystic, Connecticut.
nixiebunny

I was really worried when I heard him talking about the school bus and the car that was almost run into, but neither of them appeared to be harmed at all. you’d think, from the announcer’s voice, that each had suffered multiple fatalities.
- Jorpho
  
  A child was jostled.
  
  JOSTLED.
Christopher Smith

I was surprised that both the OP, and a lot of the commentators, were not familiar with this show. It came on the heels of “COPS” and was freaking everywhere in the 90′s. I hear that narrated voice in my head anytime I see a chase on TV. If this show is news to you, you have hours of stunned, horrific joy/shame ahead of you.
huskerdont

It was right about this time I gave up on network TV (except the Simpsons, of course). Ah, memories.
fredh

This is just begging to be turned into a 70′s truck driving song incorporating all the details. Somebody with more musical talent than me get on it.
travtastic

John Bunnell’s apparent fetish for punishing and shooting people is creepy.
Palomino

I wonder if the jostled child survived his injuries.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OAUXAA362EXWLYVMPJOKLFB5JQ Incipient Madness

What I always disliked about this clip is that they imply that sparks set the wood on fire. There’s a little forklift attached to the back of the trailer. The fire is the burning fuel and oil from the forklift. The wood dies ignite and burn a little, but quickly goes out once the forklift fire goes out. It’s very hard to get tightly packed lumber to burn.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  The color of the smoke was a bit of a hint that it wasn’t from burning wood.
  - benher
    
    But Fox news SAID it was the wood!
    - http://www.facebook.com/papertigerx Steven Fast Petersen
      
      Yeah. “Fox News”
JhmL

I wonder how much prison time he got.
http://twitter.com/tueksta Andreas Beer

best high five ever!
serpent

Rubberduck returns?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077369/
Btw, you can watch the whole movie on Youtube. The fight scene in the bar is hillarious!
IndexMe

The driver probably was having a psychotic episode / was on drugs / having a mental breakdown. Was there no way to stop without shooting him personally?