‘Reality’ TV programmes follow live cops chasing cars that have been stolen, are being driven by people allegedly under the influence, or involved in criminal activity. The riffs are fast car chases, often involving great danger to the public, listening to cops explaining what they are doing or why they, personally, are doing their jobs, and listening to people making pathetic attempts to lie their way out of trouble.

The speed of the chases is frightening, posing great danger to any public in the area.  All the speed chases are initiated by suspected offenders trying to escape, but all the vehicles involved are endangering the public. And only because the chase is on. Sometimes they involve spectacular crashes when you wonder why nobody is dead or seriously injured.

Early cop statements after Saturday`s tragedy talked about the chase having been discontinued. That is something that does happen when chases are seen as too dangerous by the cops involved. When it was subsequently announced that Saturday`s chase had been discontinued 10 seconds before the crash it started to sound like one of the collapsing offender`s excuses that are mocked in those TV programmes

In the programmes, chasing cops do stay on the right side of dual carriageways when those chased don`t, but they don`t give up the chase. To claim a car homing in on the chase along the A66 as not being involved in the chase is disingenuous. In all probability it was trying to corner the chased car.

So why, in this tragedy, are the cops already trying to minimise any responsibility their policies and tactics might have for the deaths? This is dangerous territory for the establishment. Police forces have always sought to justify their role by being on the side of ordinary decent citizens. Deaths directly and indirectly involving police officers are a threat to that message. Fatal police actions that can be questioned always set off negative family and community responses.

The Channel 5 programmes, and others of their ilk, are not providing any public service. They are entertainment with a positive cop message that aims to belittle anybody who crosses the cops path. In the wake of this tragedy they probably need closing down.

But way beyond that, the positive attitude towards incredibly dangerous chases has to be challenged and called out for the disaster, once waiting to happen, that it has now become with the tragic deaths of two police officers and five young men.