The call by one Ballarat resident who witnessed at close quarters a pursuit late last week has again cast up the spectre of innocent people being hurt or killed.

It has also brought an element of local drama to a tough dilemma faced by police across the country.

For the community, there is a disturbing and visceral sense of alarm when these same pursuits go roaring through the streets in which we live.

There have been many sound arguments opposing the value of these pursuits, particularly when they evaluate what can be gained in terms of captured stolen cars or criminals and the potential cost to the community.

The United States once again highlights a grim example of where we as a community do not want to go. Analysis by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration showed there was a staggering 2654 fatal crashes with 3146 fatalities over a nine-year study period last decade.

If that doesn’t seem like a lot, it is almost three-quarters of the death count for US service personnel from the Iraq conflict.

Even more concerning is that in this same period, 1088 of the fatalities were not in the fleeing vehicle and may have been innocent victims.

The conclusion of this report is that most of these pursuits occurred at high speed, at night and involved fleeing drivers with prior convictions.

In the badlands of the United States this raises the spectre of desperadoes which no level of force will deter. But as acting Victoria Police Commissioner Keiran Walshe pointed out, to adopt a blanket policy of abandoning all pursuits is to admit defeat to criminals and give the green light to anybody that dares break the speed limit. This could result in an even more anarchic Mad Max safety scenario.

The commissioner was at pains to detail some of the complexities of chase scenarios and the time pressures with which these decisions often need to be made.

If there is a middle ground to this difficult issue it must lie in the sophistication and expediency with which these pursuits are made, not in letting dangerous drivers go.

To minimise the risks it will then come down to the effectiveness of the rules and systems and perhaps, most importantly, ensuring there are resources to make them happen.