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Old March 17, 2006, 11:38 AM   #12
newerguy
Senior Member
 
Join Date: June 5, 2005
Posts: 218
The rubber part of a tire is fairly small, and is on the edge of the wheel. A car is moving, potentially moving very quickly. A miss carries a risk to others. Unless you lose a tire while manuvering, it's not that big a deal (no one here has ever had a blowout?). Cars running from the police routinely lose tires, often all of them. A car without tires is plenty drivable, but harder to turn and stop (for clarification, you have much less traction, so sliding and skiding are more likely). This makes a car with no tires more dangerous to others on the road, as the driver will be less able to avoid other vehicles and pedestrians.

For a civilian, there is no reason to shoot out someones tires. If they are getting away, let them. If they are getting closer, use the time you'd spend stopping, aiming ans shooting to get away. BTW, you are very unlikely to be chased by someone in a car.

Doug, I think you either need to seriously reevaluate your threat level, or change your lifestyle (don't take offense, but unless you are involved with criminals, have a line of work that pisses off criminals, or are married some psycho's ex no one is going to hunt you down, and if someone is looking for YOU, and they are remotely inteligent, you'll be dead before you know today's the day.)

For law enforcement, the return on shooting out a cars tires aren't usually worth the investment. I know of a case where a TransAm with no tires was boxed in and was actually able to start moving the police cars by alternating between hitting the front one and the back one. The driver was stopped when two cops broke through the side windows and dragged the driver out of the car. Shooting the driver wasn't an option because of all the police around the car. (BTW, one of the cops who got the driver out also got hurt in the process). That's real life.
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