High-speed car chases... do the criminals ever get away?

I woke up this morning to the news covering a high speed police chase. It went just as you can imagine - car was stolen, police chased it, car crashed into several things but continued to try and outrun the cops, and of course eventually ran into a telephone poll where the police were able to apprehend him. Now, we will save the whole discussion of why the public is so obsessed with police chases for another day since I have no answer for that... but I did stay and watch it all play out, making myself late for the gym.

But it got me thinking - do the criminals ever get away? I don't understand why anyone would try and outrun a cop. It can never end good and you would inevitably end up in a lot more trouble then when you started. In Georgia, an idiot teenager decided to flee from the cops and when the cops tried to get him to pull over by tapping the bumper of his car, his car ended up rolling over several times and the teenager ending up paralyzed. Now this issue is heading for the supreme court this week to see if using "deadly force" is unconstitutional. I find it ridiculous. More than 350 people die each year as a result of a high speed chase and I'm guessing a lot of those deaths are innocent bystanders. Police should be able to do whatever necessary to get them off the road. Luckily it looks like the supreme court will be siding with the police.

Anyways - back to whether or not criminals can outrun the cops... the New Yorker gives it about a 20% chance:

The cops like to say that no one gets away, but about twenty per cent of suspects do, often because the police call off the pursuit when it starts to get too dangerous. Motorcyclists, who can go faster than cops in patrol cars, fare particularly well. But, once police helicopters are over the suspect, his escape window closes. Depending on where in the county the pursuit begins, this gives him (and, nearly all of the time, the suspect is male) about five to ten minutes to try to shake free before aerial backup arrives.

I still think its stupid.

(And yes, I know - this is definitely my most random post thus far!)