A viral video of a driver appearing to escape from a police chase through the busy streets of New York City appears to belong to a genre of video game-inspired streaming
3 hours ago
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A viral YouTube video has garnered significant attention from streamers due to its intense and perilous content. The video documents a police chase involving an unmarked Ford Taurus cruiser that took place in New York City, shot from the perspective of the fleeing vehicle.
The clip lacks context regarding the reason for the chase’s initiation. It’s worth noting that the footage begins with a disclaimer stating that it was created using Unreal Engine 5. I presume this is to get around content moderation rules.
The chase commences at the intersection of 21st Street and Astoria Boulevard in Queens. It’s not clear why, but an unmarked Ford Taurus police cruiser with its lights on is behind the POV car, which is equipped with forward and rear-facing cameras.
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Read: NYPD Involved In Another Dangerous Moped Chase That Ends With Teen Crashing
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Although very little of the vehicle can be seen in the video, comments suggest it may be a BMW, and the uploader’s Twitch channel has a photo of a BMW M2 as its header (see pic below). However, the video claims that the driver is the owner of the ‘John_freezh’ Instagram page, whose bio suggests he is a “motorcycle enthusiast.”
From the street corner, the fleeing car drives quickly through a variety of residential streets at speeds of up to 97 km/h (60 mph). The reason for displaying the speeds in kilometers per hour in the video remains unclear.
Narrowly avoiding parked cars and pedestrians, the driver weaves through city streets before getting onto a tightly jammed highway. It’s worth noting that in 2022, Pix11 reported that New York City was ranked as the deadliest city for pedestrians in America.
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On the highway, the driver encounters heavy traffic, as this chase occurred in broad daylight. Weaving through slowly moving vehicles, and onto the shoulder, the driver hits cones and, eventually, gets jammed between the barrier and a school bus. While the impact doesn’t seem violent from the camera car’s perspective, if there were any children on the bus, it was likely a frightening ordeal for the unbelted passengers.
The driver eventually squeezes past a taxi through a construction zone, which helps them lose the cops. The video ends in the Bronx with the camera car still driving dangerously through traffic, but with no police officers in view.
We have reached out to the New York Police Department (NYPD) for comment on this video, and are awaiting a response. The content appears to belong to a genre of streaming videos in which drivers post footage of themselves fleeing from police, in much the same way as they might post a video of escaping cops in the game Grand Theft Auto. However, the consequences of something going even mildly wrong in this context are deadlier to the participants, the police, and the hundreds of innocent bystanders unwittingly included in it.
