California Police Post Dodge Charger Pursuit Drifting Montage to Remind Us to… Drive Safe?
Those Chargers can really dance.
"Günther's training for winter driving, aren't you?" The Truckee-area California Highway Patrol recently showed off their Emergency Vehicle Operations Course by teaching an elf on the shelf mad drift skills. This is supposed to remind us all to be prepared for winter, somehow.
Sick Dodge Charger pursuit car drifts are a weird choice for this PSA, though. Sure, learning how to control cars at speed is a common and necessary part of cops' training, especially in chase-happy California. Knowing how to control a slide certainly helps on slick surfaces, so much so that I think everyone should have some closed-course fun at something like a track day or rallycross event to learn how to recover when you start to lose control of a car.
Also, someone in the CHP clearly missed their chance at Formula D stardom.
Truckee gets more than its fair share of snow. The town is the infamous site of the Donner Party incident, where a group of settlers encountered a brutal early winter while taking a shortcut through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. After they exhausted their food supplies, the settlers resorted to cannibalism in order to survive. Winter there gets super rough, and no doubt there should be a reminder to be careful.
But let's be honest here: The CHP isn't really pumping up the closed-training-course aspect of this drift montage in the video itself—just in the description. If we got caught going full Fast and Furious 40: Donner Drift on the roads in any type of weather—which would put us in the danger zone for other traffic—the CHP would absolutely bust us. It's a truly weird video.
That last line about Günther the Elf Recruit polishing up his winter driving skills sounds particularly ominous given that this is the same state agency that once sent a helicopter and five patrol cars to nab one car doing donuts in the middle of nowhere. Do as we say and not as we do, I guess.
Cops or no cops, stay safe out there—and please don't go full Initial D: Ice Stage out the roads.
Update: Tuesday, November 24, 2020, 8:04 p.m. ET: The CHP has since pulled the video from their page.
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