Hot pursuits stopped cold

I don't know how we missed this, but here's a Pasadena item from Discovery News that ran in November but's sort of related to a story from earlier this week. Of course the Chippies didn't need any fancy stuff, all it took was the suspect ramming his Nissan Titan into a mountainside at 70 mph. The item begins below:

Nov. 29, 2007 -- The same microwave radiation that reheats pizza can be used to fry the electrical systems in cars, stopping them dead in their tracks.

Emitted from a rooftop device, the radiation could be used by law enforcement officers to put an end to dangerous car chases or by military personnel as a non-lethal way of disabling vehicles that get too close for comfort.

"The idea is to warn an automobile some distance away from a high-value target like a military barrack or a communication center. If they don't comply, you just zap them and it prevents them from coming closer," said James Tatoian, CEO of Eureka Aerospace in Pasadena, Calif.