From Gizmag, the latest break in vehicle stopping technology.
In the first video you can see this “catch and release” vehicle program in action. The Pit-BUL prototype is a spiked net combo strip. Perfect for check points, it safely disables the target vehicle within a short distance of crossing the strip, and renders it completely immovable. It appears to be a much better alternative to concrete barriers, since it is much lighter, much more maneuverable, and prevents the car from driving after deflating and wrapping the front tires, versus with a normal spike strip, where the car can still move and do damage with flat tires.
Although at first sight it does appear that they are launching foam belts from the most complex and expensive jack-in-the-box ever created, this is actually the latest technology in deploying spike strips. This solves both problems of safely of officers deploying the spike strips during a high speed pursuit, and the safety of the pursuing police cruisers who inadvertantly run over the same strips in pursuit of the fleeing vehicle. It appears they are not using a real spike strip for the purposes of the demonstration, which explains why the repeated tests run look completely unsuccessful at stopping the vehicle. Otherwise, the new tire budget for the owner of that early 2000s 4Runner would probably drain the production and patent budget.
