Editorial: No win situation for police if a driver flees

Linda Hall, Assistant Editor, Hawke's Bay Today.

Opinion

As police and emergency services attended the worst crash on New Zealand Roads in 13 years on Wednesday, some hooligan was speeding around our streets with no regard to anyone's safety.

The devastating head-on collision in Taranaki left seven people dead. My heart goes out to the family of the victims and I'm sure the entire nation feels the same.

It's just horrific. I also feel for the emergency staff at the scene.

I'm sure they will be getting lots of support — they will need it.

We don't know why this crash happened and I'm not going to speculate here.

My point is that emergency services in Hawke's Bay could well have been facing a similar situation yesterday if just one little thing went wrong in the police pursuit which ended with the arrest of an 17-year-old male.

The police are damned if they do and damned if they don't when a driver decides to flee.
We have all read about some the fatal ends to police pursuits.

In yesterday's case the police abandoned the chase because of the manner in which the car was being driven.

But here's the thing. It didn't stop the driver from roaring around busy suburbia streets at speeds reportedly up to 95km/h.

Witnesses say he was driving on the wrong side of the road and " made an extremely dangerous manoeuvre past two cars" right outside a school. Things could so easily have gone horribly wrong.

The driver had one thing on his mind and that was to escape the police. He didn't care who or what got in his way.

If he had hit a child the police would probably be condemned for not stopping him. If they had been in pursuit when he hit someone they would have copped it for chasing him.

It really is a a no-win situation for them.

What's the answer? Tougher penalties for the fleeing drivers. That doesn't mean throwing them in jail. Perhaps they need to go and do some community work in a place where people with both physical and brain injuries from car crashes are trying to get their lives back on track.

Or how about they go clean emergency vehicles, sweep the floors at the fire station and just listen to what these people, many of them volunteers, deal with every day.