An invention that would end high-speed police chases
In theory, police could use remote control to force a car to slow down
What if police could stop high-speed chases before they started? In 1984, Hamilton officer Dave Robertson thought there had to be a way.
"High-speed chases are just a horror story for the police," said Robertson, who had been on the scene of a highway crash that killed two teenagers after a police pursuit.
The year before had seen 1,600 high-speed police chases, and 15 civilians had been killed by them since 1982.
So Robertson turned to his friend Mike Stolar, who came up with a solution in his factory workshop outside Hamilton.
The device Stolar came up with attached to the distributor coil under the hood of a car and choked off electrical power to the engine.
In a demonstration, CBC reporter Claude Adams saw how it worked.
'Dick Tracy-like device'
"A motorist could be brought to a crawl by a policeman with a remote transmitter," said Adams.
The remote control, and the officer using it, had to be within 100 metres of the speeding car before triggering the device. It worked by making the voltage drop in the car's battery, which cut power and forced the car to slow down gradually.
But Adams asked if critics would view the device as something that enabled a "police state."
"I'm afraid they're just going to have to view it for what it is," said Robertson. "It's there to stop a high-speed chase before it gets started.
"All we want to do is see people's lives saved."
For the idea to work, Robertson and Stolar knew it would take legislation from Ottawa to see the device installed on all Canadian-made and imported cars.