High-speed car chases are recognized as a road safety problem, as vehicles not involved in the pursuit or pedestrians or street furniture may be hit by the elusive driver, who will often violate a number of traffic laws, often repeatedly, in their attempt to escape, or by the pursuing police cars
Just recently, the anticipation for a newborn baby turned to mourning after a 25-year-old pregnant woman was hit and killed by a lorry driver who was allegedly escaping police in a high-speed chase.
Ms Eunice Maguke, whom family members said was six-months’ pregnant, met her gruesome death at her roadside kiosk on Kabachi in Nakuru town where she was busy arranging her groceries.
The mother of one died on the spot.
Ms Maguke is not a lone statistic.
In December 2017, a vehicle fleeing a National Transport and Safety Authority patrol car caused an accident at Sachang’wan, on the Nakuru-Eldoret highway, leading to the death of 16 people. Several others were injured in the crash.
On August, 21, 2018 a lorry driver ferrying charcoal and fleeing from police caused multiple accidents involving five vehicles and injured two pedestrians on Limuru Road.
While the Traffic Act criminalises reckless driving and offers a maximum of 10 years in jail for any person who causes death by driving recklessly, there seems to be no police policy on how to carry out high-speed chases.
Studies in the US have led to calls for a balance between high-speed chases and the rule of law after it emerged that “35 to 40 per cent of all chases end in accidents, about 20 per cent in injury and one per cent in death,” according to Geoffrey Alpert, a criminology professor at the University of South Carolina who studied the issue in the late 1990s.
In some countries, police do not chase cars for traffic offences, thus limiting such chases to violent felonies and sparing the lives of innocent victims.
While police arrested the driver of the lorry that caused Ms Maguke’s death, they are still mum about the appropriateness of police chases and the circumstances that surround them.