Originally Posted by
whomever
I'd be fascinated to hear any insight you have into the psychology that's behind that.
I mean, I can imagine going on a high speed chase if I'm in the French Resistance and getting caught means dying screaming in a Gestapo dungeon, or I suppose if I have a few bodies in the trunk and the eluding charge is going to be stacked on LWOP anyway. But given the (relatively small???) probability of successfully getting away, why do it for a minor offense? Just a case of crooks not being good at figuring consequences? The consequences will come, say, ten minutes from now and that's past their event horizon?
I guess this is just one of the special cases of the general case of honest people not understanding crooks, even putting morality aside. I can understand addicts, I guess, whose immediate need eclipses any thoughts of consequences, or maybe a Wall Street type who figures making $20M on an insider trading scheme is worth a .01% chance of getting caught, but doing a high speed chase for a minor crime just seems ... dumb. Heck, ignore the legal penalty and just think about the cost of wrecking; it just doesn't add up.