I'm watching a televised police pursuit — a guy in a red car who's been leading cops on and off the Southbound 405 and other connecting roads for about an hour now. It's a fairly slow speed chase and the C.H.P. has about a dozen cars following him.
The TV newsfolks are talking about spike-strips and PIT maneuvers…and when I watch these things, I wonder why no one ever tries dropping a paint bomb on one of these fleeing cars. I'm thinking about something like a big water balloon full of some sort of water-based paint (so it could be washed off the streets easily). Some chemist could easily whip up a formula that would go on thick enough to block the driver's vision and not wash off via windshield washers and wipers. There are helicopters above and it probably wouldn't be hard to devise a "bomb sight" that would drop a load on a car below with some precision.
It couldn't be used with a lot of traffic around but this driver is nowhere near anyone except the officers in pursuit. Yeah, he might crash but if you blow out his tires with a spike-strip, he might crash. They take that risk.
This seems like such an obvious idea to me that I must be missing some reason it wouldn't work. Anyone have any idea what it might be?