New Zealand Cops Deliver the Most Thrilling Pursuit Ever. Of a Golf Cart

4 years, 5 months ago - 17 July 2020, autoevolution
New Zealand Cops Deliver the Most Thrilling Pursuit Ever. Of a Golf Cart
We’ve all seen our fair share of high-speed car pursuits, one more dramatic than the other, but a police car chase as spectacular as this one hasn’t happened since probably O.J. Simpson.

Of course, low-speed pursuits were happening long before O.J. Simpson's name went down in history for all the wrong reasons – specifically, for evading cops in a one-hour long car chase in Los Angeles in 1994, in the backseat of a 1933 white Bronco being driven at low speeds. As it turns out, they're still happening these days and they're almost as dramatic as high-speed ones. Almost.

The strangest scene played out for residents of the Ngaruawahia neighborhood in New Zealand last Sunday. A police car, with lights and sirens blaring, was in hot pursuit of a golf cart, and both vehicles were traveling at crawl pace, going on and off the footpath. There was something so disproportionate about the whole thing that, as you can imagine, people stopped, took out their phones and recorded the moment for posterity.

You can see one of these videos at the bottom of the page. It's probably the funniest and most thrilling you'll see today.

As it turns out, the golf cart was one of the two EZGO RXVs stolen from the local golf club. Perhaps more hilarious than the car "chase" itself is the fact that police weren't even able to catch the suspect right away, as he was able to get away on foot.

"About 12.20pm yesterday, Ngaruawahia Police located a golf cart thought to have been stolen in a recent burglary. The rider of the cart failed to stop for police when signaled to do so," Waikato road policing manager Inspector Jeff Penno tells the NZ Herald. "Police followed the vehicle at low speed until a member of the public intervened, at which time the rider fled on foot."

Penno assures members of the public that, even though the police cruiser drove on the footpath, there were no civilians around and it was traveling at slow speed (like we couldn't tell!) and there was no immediate risk of harm.

Both golf carts have since been recovered and the police have a suspect in custody, in relation to the theft and failure to comply, which led to this insane (though not really) car chase.