Hollywood Police Driving Academy

What the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy does for marksmanship, this trope does for police driving. In Real Life, it's largely assumed that most law enforcement personnel are professionals when it comes to Car Chases; Their movie, television, video game, etc. counterparts, not so much. In fiction, especially if they're chasing the protagonists, they crash into fruit and/or vegetable carts, get cut off by closing railroad crossings and opening draw bridges, drive their vehicles into ditches or off cliffs, and run into any number of other snafus a trained professional in the real world (or anyone with a learner's permit) would know to avoid if at all possible.

See also Car Chase and the subtrope Lemming Cops, which dials up the idiocy to ridiculous levels. Tends to hang out at the donut shop with Bad Cop, Incompetent Cop and Police Are Useless.

Examples of Hollywood Police Driving Academy include:

Anime and Manga

• The leading ladies of You're Under Arrest, parodied mercilessly by their Captain Ersatz counterparts in Full Metal Panic!.

Comic Books

• In an issue of Sin City, Marv and Dwight lead a squad car right into Old Town where the prostitutes promptly blast the crap out of the car and send the cops scurrying.
• Bookhunter: We only ever see the library police driving when they're in a legitimate hurry to get somewhere — so every time, they're driving fast enough to go airborne on any incline, and barely maintaining control of the vehicle as they screech through turns.

Film

• The Ur Example, the Keystone Kops.
• James Bond encounters many of the academy's fine graduates in the movies where he's in the United States.
• Sheriff Loomis and his men from the 1980s cult classic The Wraith clearly also received their training at the academy.
• The Blues Brothers - The cops who pursue Elwood and Jake. The ones who chase them in the sequel are the advanced class, to the point where it breaks the Suspension of Disbelief. At least when they confront the pileup at the end of Lower Wacker Drive in the first film, the cops stop.
• Some cops seen chasing the protagonists in the Disney movie Freaky Friday (the original).
• The ATF agents involved in the opening Chase Scene from the movie Black Dog.
• The Trope Maker and founder of the academy, Sheriff Buford T. Justice of Smokey and the Bandit.
  • With the added bonus that the character was named for a Real Life highway patrolman!
• In Unstoppable, near the end, several police cars acting as an escort for Ned end up crashing on a tight turn. Mind you, Ned is in a pickup truck and he made that turn perfectly.
• Mad Max: Max Rockatansky was a police officer prior to the collapse of civilization. He also was apparently valedictorian of the Australian branch of the academy.
• In Logorama, police played by Michelin Men show no regard for the M&Ms they run over. Or anyone else, for that matter. Anything to stop Ronald McDonald.

Live-Action TV

• Sheriff Rosco P Coltrane of Dukes of Hazzard, the academy's chief driving instructor.
• Sheriff Elroy P. Lobo (BJ and the Bear, The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo) may have preceded Rosco Coltrane as chief instructor, if his own department is any testament.
• Meldrick Lewis from Homicide: Life on the Street must have been an honor student.
• From The Sentinel, Jim is infamous for the number of trucks he's wrecked, to the point that it's almost impossible for him to get good insurance. Every Car Chase involves gratuitous Fruit Cart destruction, numerous "orange"-light runs, and any passengers cowering in their seats.

Blair Sandburg: "Jim, that's a red light. Jim, there are pedestrians in the road! Jim, slow down! Jim!!"

• Averted by Ponch and Jon on CHiPs but turned Up to Eleven with the rest of the California Highway Patrol and just about everyone else driving the Southern California freeways.

Video Games

• Grand Theft Auto series. The Police, Ambulance-drivers, and—to an even greater degree—the FBI-agents. The general level of crazy driving varies a lot from game to game.
  • Grand Theft Auto had cops that were rather hard to shake, Grand Theft Auto 2 was similar, though slightly easier.
  • Grand Theft Auto 3 - the cops could keep up with you on a straight road if you had an average car.
  • Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - The cops learned from the Hazard County Sheriffs. Then did a lot of blow, apparently!
  • Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - The police would rather kamikaze you with their cars. San Andreas has a well-supported PIT maneuver mechanic, so there can be method to their madness.
  • Grand Theft Auto IV - Despite it's more serious take on the series, the cops that would rather sit at the side of the road and watch you speed by in a crippled minivan. This time the game spawns new cops ahead of you instead of making AI good enough to actually chase you. When they do chase, they almost drive reasonably.
  • In Chinatown Wars for the DS, where the cops were memorably described in Zero Punctuation as "having brick wall magnets attached to their bumpers."