A woman captured the beginning of a dramatic car chase which started in South Otago and finished with a car being rammed off the road in Mataura.
Andi Smyth, of Invercargill, posted a nine minute video to Facebook which shows a police car attempting to pull a white station wagon over near Balclutha yesterday afternoon.
The driver fails to pull over and continues to evade police for almost nine minutes.
While the chase started off slowly, the video ends with the car crashing into a police car as it speeds off down SH1.
The chase finished with the car being rammed off the road on the outskirts of Mataura.
Mrs Smyth provides commentary throughout the video in which she describes as a "slow speed car chase".
Two other police vehicles join in on the chase, before the driver being pursued pulls out and collides with one of the police vehicles.
Upon seeing the collision, Ms Smyth exclaimed "you're kidding me''.
The police cars attempted to box the vehicle in, but it still evaded capture.
Ms Smyth decided to pull over at the end and wait as police continued the pursuit.
She ended the video at Moa Hill Rd, between Balclutha and Clinton.
Mrs Smyth's husband Chris Smyth, who was driving, told the Otago Daily Times, said they were shocked the driver did not pull over, especially once the first police car was joined by two more.
"He just was not stopping."
They were "definitely" a little scared they would be caught up in the chase.
That was why he made the decision to pull over and let police past, which was something other road users did not do, Mr Smyth said.
"I was quite surprised that the other road users were just oblivious of what to do when they saw the police behind them."
While it started slow, with the driver obeying all the road rules apart from stopping for police, it ended with him speeding off and hitting a police car at about 100kmh.
They were driving home from Timaru and it was definitely the most spectacular incident they had seen on that stretch of road.
"It broke the monotony because we travel up and down quite a bit."
He was later told by police that they rammed the car off the road just inside the 50kmh zone on the outskirts of Mataura after earlier spiking its wheels.
Police made the decision to ram the car off the road because they were worried about the chase continuing through the town.
A police spokesperson said police were alerted at 2pm about a car being driven in a concerning manner.
The vehicle failed to stop for police and was pursued from Balclutha to Old Coach Rd where the car was spiked.
The pursuit ended about 3pm.
The driver was taken into custody.
