11 Of The Wildest Real-Life Car Chases In U.S. History

When imagining a crazy car chase, the first thing that comes to mind is a scene from the most iconic and classic car chases in movie history, like "The Italian Job" or "The Matrix Reloaded": actors behind the wheels of expensive cars, evading authorities with near-death stunts on public streets. Thankfully, those kinds of chases don't happen in reality. More often than not, it's an ill-advised criminal fleeing the crime scene in a commuter car, minus impressive movie car stunts. But Hollywood got its inspiration from somewhere. America's car-dependent society, extensive roads, and heavily policed infrastructure make the perfect storm for dangerous car chases.

We're looking at those rare car chases across U.S. history that would fit just right into a Hollywood action thriller — and deserve recognition, if only for how crazy they were. We're shying away from the more violent ones of the Bonnie and Clyde variety, and sticking to modern instances that tend to have news coverage. Some of these chases don't involve escaping cars, but rather whatever vehicle was on hand, even if it wasn't street legal. Here are eleven we think take the cake.

O.J. Simpson was an American football star turned killer and armed robber. If you haven't heard of him, then maybe you've heard the phrase "if the glove doesn't fit" — a defense argument from his murder trial. Equally well known is O.J.'s infamous white Ford Bronco, which he used as a getaway car in one of America's most sensational police chases. Authorities demanded that Simpson surrender himself for arrest on June 17, 1994, a few days after his ex-wife had been found murdered. Simpson hid out until someone spotted him with a friend that evening. What ensued was a police "chase." Police tailed Simpson's slow-moving car for 60 miles while his friend drove. Meanwhile, in the back, Simpson was armed with a gun, phoning authorities and threatening to kill himself.

Though not high-speed, the chase was televised live to 95 million Americans. Simpson was a beloved football star, after all, and many were still doubtful that he was guilty. During the chase, locals got uncomfortably close. People were cheering "Run O.J., run!" from street corners, overpasses, and their vehicles. NBA games and news interviews were cut short. The car eventually stopped, and Simpson was arrested. The rest is history. This event was so famous that the 1996 Ford Bronco was allegedly discontinued. Today, Simpson's Bronco sits in a museum.

While Tesla's autopilot self-driving ability may be impressive, some people treat it like a robotaxi. There are several instances where people have been caught sleeping in an autopiloted Tesla — including by the police, such as in the above video — but in some rare cases, their vehicles decided to make the police work for it.

In 2018, Alexander Joseph Samek was sleeping in his Tesla Model S as it drove him down California's Highway 101 at 3:30 a.m., as reported by ABC News. The police's lights and sirens couldn't seem to wake him, so the police chased the car for seven miles. They stopped it by pulling in front and braking, forcing the autopilot to stop. Self-driving cars have been in horrific crashes, so California police knew the danger. Now, this wasn't an aggressive, evasive chase like others on this list, but "car runs from police while driver sleeps" certainly reads like something out of a high-tech cyberpunk future.

Samek wasn't just tired — he was intoxicated. Samek later pleaded guilty to a DUI. An even longer automated car police chase took place across the pond in Germany in 2023. German police chased a man's self-driving Tesla for 15 minutes at speeds of up to 70 miles per hour. That these situations continue to happen proves that people still have ways to subvert Tesla's driver awareness detection, and police may still occasionally have to chase down literal robots.

You read that right. In 1995, in the beachside town of San Diego, Shawn Nelson went on a demolition spree in a stolen M-60 tank — a U.S. tank so good it's been in service for 60 years. In just 23 minutes, Nelson took out 40 vehicles, municipal infrastructure, and cut electricity to the area. He observed the destruction from the tank's turret, laughing maniacally. Police were only able to stop him when he crashed and got stuck, after which they shot him while attempting to break in for an arrest. Thankfully — aside from Nelson — there were no casualties, and the tank's guns had no ammunition.

So what inspired the rampage? According to People, Nelson had been an affable plumber, vet, and happily married man. Although he was a bit on the weird side, nobody ever considered him dangerous. It seems a sequence of unfortunate events drove him over a cliff: his mother died; he suffered a debilitating neck break, allegedly exacerbated by hospital negligence; and his van and tools were stolen, crippling his earning potential. In the face of these misfortunes, Nelson self-medicated with drugs and alcohol till his friends and family no longer recognized him.

He decided to end things by breaking into an armory to commandeer the tank. Some theorize that aside from vengeful destruction, he may have been targeting the hospital where his mother (and his injury) were improperly treated. Nelson's story is eerily reminiscent of Marvin Heemeyer, who built a "killdozer" in 2004 and demolished buildings in his local town in vengeance against the city that ruined his business.

If you've ever seen the 1974 movie "Sugarland Express," you may know it was based on a true story — and that true story was truly wild. It began in 1969 with ex-convict Robert Dent and his wife, Fae Dent. Robert was fresh out of prison, and when he got pulled over in Texas with his wife, he fled the scene rather than risk being put back in. The car broke down and the couple escaped into the woods, where they came up with a harebrained idea: pretend to be a pair of lost hitchhikers while calling 911, luring in an unsuspecting policeman and making his cruiser into their getaway car.

It worked. The Dents took trooper Kenneth Krone hostage and made him drive with their guns pointed at him. Eventually, a caravan 100-strong of police, news, and ambulances cautiously trailed the hostage trooper. Meanwhile, the fugitives were talked down by the officers over radio. Twice during the chase, the Dents were allowed to make a classic American gas station stop — as in, grabbing Fritos and hitting the John — before continuing.

The police pulled off a gutsy rescue. After tricking the fugitives into making one final stop, Krone hit the deck and the police unloaded, killing Robert and sparing Fae for the judge. The film adaptation — the debut feature of Steven Spielberg — wasn't entirely faithful to the real series of events.

A half-naked man brandishing a knife, stealing a shopping center's security golf cart, and fleeing the scene with an also-stolen dog sounds like a deleted scene from "Grand Theft Auto V." But nope, this happened in 2023 in LA, according to ABC 7 News. Fox 11's news helicopter video coverage of the chase is about as hilarious as you would expect: the suspect never goes much higher than 20 miles per hour as multiple police cars hound him. The suspect tries to head them off by cutting through parking lots and weaving through buildings. Bystanders in cars stop and watch in shock. Eventually, police corral the driver, trapping him. He abandons the cart (dog in hand) and runs for it. Police tackle him. The end. The dog survives unscathed, although perhaps a bit confused.

Further information is hard to come by. Little is known about the man, his charges, his state of mind, or his reasoning. KTLA reports that he was shouting "Don't drink, don't do drugs, be a better person" to the cameras before police took him away. Whatever the reason, it's perhaps the silliest way to get a criminal record. Equally embarrassing is how the LAPD decided a shirtless, unarmed man in a slow vehicle holding a dog "hostage" merited such a massively asymmetrical response. Whatever the case, the story is a reminder that Rockstar Games' satirical depiction of America isn't far from reality.

In 2024, Zachary Hartley got into an aggressive altercation with staff at Jefferson Regional Medical Center in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. He was allegedly under the influence of some substance, and he was so physically threatening that security tasered him. He then stole a golf cart from the parking lot and fled, as reported by RVM News. Initially, hospital staff tried to follow him, but then officers caught up as he threaded down city streets. Eventually, police cars surrounded him at an intersection. Hartley looped around a building back to a main road, but a man caught up to him on foot and leapt into the back of the moving cart, forcing Hartley to a stop.

The "Yakety Sax" part is because the police department added the slapstick soundtrack to the video when they posted it on Facebook. Given how recent this event was at the time of writing, we are unable to find further information about the aftermath.

Pop quiz: How often do police pull cars over, only to discover a child behind the wheel? Answer: way more often than you might think. In 2024, NBC News reports that a Volkswagen sedan fled the police after being curiously stopped in an intersection. The chase was short, ending uneventfully, and officers discovered a 9-year-old boy driving himself, he claimed, to school.

Incidents like this are not all that rare. In the above video, a 10-year-old leads officers in a high-speed chase. There's another chase from 2015 where a young boy in pajamas was eventually stopped by police, who discovered his smaller siblings in the back. In 2023, an 8-year-old stole a car at gunpoint and was charged with first-degree robbery, according to WSAZ3 News. We could keep going, but you get the point.

We've got tanks and golf carts being used as getaway vehicles. What else is on our bingo card? Try a compact track loader. In Mobile, Alabama, ex-convict Joseph Shelby Jones stole a Kubota SVL75-3 from an asphalt paving company and led authorities on a truly bizarre police chase — especially once he tried to hit people with it. Jones fled down the I-10 and wielded the Kubota's bucket as a weapon against approaching police vehicles, smashing one and causing "major damage," according to Equipment World.

If it wasn't already obvious, the track loader is an incredibly slow-moving vehicle. A running person could easily keep pace with it. Still, the police trailed the loader at a distance, given the multiple instances where it turned on them, the bucket raised in an almost comically threatening way. The chase ended with Jones' Kubota surrounded by over a dozen police vehicles like a bull in a matador's ring. Jones charged erratically — slowly — at the vehicles in a last defense, until police opened fire, hitting him. According to Fox 10 News, Jones was in critical condition after the event and the officers who shot him were put on administrative leave. The investigation is ongoing and Jones' future is unclear.

Most of the chases we've described so far weren't exactly carried out by skilled drivers — except for this one. The Oklahoman reports that in 2004, William Scott Taff was pulled over for a traffic stop in his blue Mustang. Knowing that he was wanted for other charges and that he had meth in the car, he waited until the officer was occupied checking his records to flee down the highway. Taff really gunned it, going up to 110 MPH. Most impressive of all, though, he was able to pull out of multiple high-speed spinouts when the cops bumped him from the back corner. One of the must-know Mustang facts is that the Mustang brand was named after a World War II fighter plane, not a horse — which is fitting since Taff here was practically flying.

When the cops went for the final spinout, it looked like Taff was done for. His vehicle got stuck facing backward, grinding against a concrete divider. But Taff wasn't done. Like something straight out of a movie, he reversed at high speed with the policeman facing him down his front bumper, did a 180 around the end of the divider, changed gears, and peeled off down the adjoining highway — though that was when his luck ran out. Seconds later, a police cruiser knocked him onto a grassy apron. The rest surrounded Taff, pulled him out of the car, and dogpiled the driver. Thankfully, no bystanders were hurt. 

Take a guess when police started using dash cams to record their interactions. It might seem like something relatively new — perhaps late '90s onward — but the first dash-cam recorded police chase we have is from 1988. It wasn't a dash cam, technically speaking; Ohio Detective Robert Surgenor put the camera there for some other reason, and realized it was probably a good idea to hit record following a suspected robbery at the local Radio Shack. For reference, news stations broadcast police chase footage at the time, but watching them live from a news helicopter wasn't yet a thing, much less a video from a cop's perspective in the driver's seat.

The suspects weaved through street traffic, then pulled onto the highway and hit 120 MPH. The officers followed the suspect as they ran out of gas and options. Eventually, they barreled through a roadblock, allowing officers to box the damaged getaway car and bring it to a stop.

We put this one on the list of wild car chases not because it's uniquely wild, but because law enforcement from this angle was groundbreaking. Keep in mind that the Rodney King riots (sparked by a video of police violence) didn't happen until 1991. Filmed police interactions were changing people's views of the police. Plus, police did not have many bumping techniques or stop sticks like they do now, making this chase a lot more "raw," with higher stakes.

Joseph Shelby Jones wasn't the only person to steal a tractor getaway vehicle. Perhaps he was inspired by a different police chase the year prior, in which Eddie Sanchez of Gwinnett County, Georgia, stole a front loader from his former employer in apparent disgruntled retaliation. The video is insane. Unlike the track loader mentioned earlier, a front loader is much larger and can reach up to 30 mph,  making Sanchez no small threat. Similar to Jones, Sanchez took a swing at the officers' cars with the enormous front loader bucket. The chase went all over town as Sanchez U-turned back and forth to evade approaching authorities.

What's truly wild about this chase, though, was how police stopped Sanchez. Early on, they requested that his former coworker intercede with another front loader. What ensued was a demolition derby of sorts in which the other employee chased Sanchez from behind, followed by police, slamming into him at every opportunity. Sanchez made the mistake of doing another U-turn, allowing the coworker to get the bucket under his wheels and flip him. Police swooped in and arrested Jones. This was not the first time Sanchez tried to steal his former employer's front loader. He'd done the same thing a few days prior — albeit unsuccessfully.