Our strategy of avoiding eye contact with traffic police to evade tickets may soon be rendered useless.
Authorities in Thanh Hoa Province are planning to mass produce fishnet launchers to catch those who don’t pull over when flagged down by police.
The launchers have been developed by the Weapon Design Institute (Vietnamese version of DARPA?) under the Ministry of Defense, which spent three months creating and testing the tubes.
Weighing in at 2.8-3 kilograms, the 50-55 centimeter long weapons can reach a distance of 15 meters, a huge improvement over the two to three meters of hand-thrown nets.
The nets are aimed at the rear wheels of fleeing motorbikes with the idea that this will stop them gradually and safely:
“According to The Weapon Design Institute, the use of fishnets to stop the violators “does not cause severe consequences” to them, while tests on many other tools such as spikes, oils, balls and automatic barriers all proved to be “unsafe” to both violators and other motorists who might happen to be nearby.”
Thanh Hoa has a need for these devices since street racing is a major problem in the province. Youngsters (out of sheer boredom, we imagine) take to the streets at night to race and perform tricks, making some residents fearful of driving at night.
These could definitely be of use on highway 1A but let’s hope the local cops are satisfied with their light saber technology.
Update
A video of the net launcher in action has made it's way to YouTube. It also includes some sweet wipe-outs and roadblocks:
