8 Common Highway Pursuit Mistakes and How to Fix Them
Most lost lives in Highway Pursuit come from the same handful of habits. We have watched a lot of pursuits end early while building and testing the game, and the patterns are surprisingly consistent. This article walks through the eight mistakes we see most often, explains exactly why each one costs you, and gives a simple fix you can use on your very next run.
If you are completely new to the game, start with our Highway Pursuit driving guide first, then come back here.
1. Driving directly behind the suspect
It feels natural to line up right behind the getaway car — that is where the arrest meter fills, after all. The problem is that everything the suspect throws out of the window lands directly behind their car. Once they are within roughly 45 metres of you and on screen, they drop a traffic cone or an oil slick every few seconds, and the gap between drops gets shorter with each arrest you make.
A cone cuts your speed by around 40 percent. An oil slick spins your car for almost a second and you cannot steer while it lasts. Either one can let the suspect pull away or push you into traffic.
2. Treating the right lane like the others
The four lanes do not move at the same speed. Traffic in the far-left lane travels at about 75 km/h, while the far-right lane crawls along at about 44 km/h. At your top speed of 130 km/h, a car in the right lane rushes towards you almost twice as fast as one in the left lane, which leaves you far less time to react.
About one vehicle in five is a truck, and trucks are roughly one and a half times as long as a car, so they block a lane for longer than you expect.
3. Never touching the brake
Your patrol car accelerates on its own, so many players forget there is a brake at all. But compare the two outcomes when you are boxed in behind a slow truck:
- Brake for a moment: you lose a little speed and pick it back up within a couple of seconds.
- Crash: you lose one of your three lives and your speed drops to about 40 km/h. It takes several seconds to climb back to full speed, and the suspect gains a lot of ground in that time.
4. Chasing through a panic burst
When you get really close — around 9 metres — the suspect sometimes panics and floors it for just over a second. Their speed jumps well above yours and the gap opens up again. Many players respond by weaving wildly through traffic to keep up, which is exactly when crashes happen.
5. Wasting nitro
A nitro canister raises your top speed from 130 to about 190 km/h for three seconds. That is enormous when the suspect is pulling away, and almost useless when you are already on their bumper — you will simply bump into them and lose speed from the collision.
Nitro canisters show up on roughly one item spawn in eight, so they are not rare, but they are not common enough to waste either.
6. Ignoring the distance colour
The number next to the arrest meter is your most important piece of information, and its colour tells you what to do:
- Green: you are within tailing range (about 17 metres) and the meter is filling.
- White: you are in the chase but not close enough to make progress. Beyond about 40 metres the meter slowly drains.
- Red: the suspect is close to escaping. At about 133 metres they get away and you lose a life.
7. Bumping at the wrong moment
Ramming the getaway car fills a quarter of the arrest meter instantly and earns 50 points — four bumps alone are enough for an arrest. But every bump also knocks about 35 km/h off your speed, and the suspect reacts by panicking.
Bumping when the road ahead is full of traffic can leave you slow, in the wrong lane and with a car coming straight at you.
8. Forgetting that the game gets harder
Every arrest raises the difficulty. The next suspect drives faster (up to about 121 km/h on average), traffic appears more often, obstacles are thrown more frequently, and from the second pursuit onward the suspect can throw oil as well as cones. A strategy that worked perfectly in the first pursuit can fall apart by the fourth.
Putting it together
If you only remember three things, make them these: follow one lane to the side of the suspect, brake instead of crashing, and save nitro for when the distance turns red. Those three habits alone will add several arrests to a typical run.
Want a change of pace after all that driving? Try sneaking up on thieves on foot in Catch the Robber, and read our stealth tips before you start.