Think Slow

His car's siren screaming, a grim-faced detective whizzes around a corner and tears through a fruit stand, sending cantaloupes flying. A dozen red lights and near-collisions later, he finally forces the villain into an alley and arrests him.

Such chases look fine in Hollywood thrillers, but in real life they often end tragically. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that of 250,000 high-speed police pursuits every year, nearly 8,000 end in crashes, with some 400 people killed and 5,000 injured.

One cop who believes this mayhem is unnecessary is Richard Turner, a former stock car racing driver who is now a police official in Hutchins, Texas. He runs a driving school specializing in the act of the "slow chase." His three-day course, already taken by more than 750 officers from Texas, Florida and Kansas, consists of six hours of class instruction (usually in a converted saloon near Dallas) and 18 hours of driving on a course with turns known as Serpentine, Lollypop and T-Bone Alley. Turner emphasizes calm, smooth movements and no tire-squealing maneuvers. "Think slow," he tells students. "Make a corner better, and you can catch the guy even if he's going 20 miles an hour faster than you."

The day after Officer Mike Swindell finished the course, he spotted a Pontiac speeding by a stop sign. "I was always 20 miles an hour slower than he was, but he was taking those curves bad," Swindell recalls. "Finally, he missed a curve and I caught him." Officer Thomas Rudd has tried another Turner tactic: staying to the left of a fleeing car. Says he: "That's very intimidating, because the only thing the guy sees in his mirror is you about to pass him. This Dodge I was chasing could have outrun me, but he just gave up."

Turner frets that needless fast chases will continue until police attitudes are changed. "There's an ego problem," he explains. "Rookies, especially, tell themselves, 'No son of a bitch is going to beat me.' That type is dangerous--to himself and everyone else." -

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