Georgia No Chase Law: Liability, Policies, and Penalties

Georgia’s “No Chase Law” is a nickname, not a real statute, and the nickname is misleading. The law people are usually referring to is O.C.G.A. 40-6-6, which does not prohibit police pursuits. It authorizes them, grants officers specific traffic privileges while chasing a suspect, and sets a liability rule that generally shields officers from being blamed for damage caused by the person fleeing. A second statute, O.C.G.A. 35-1-14, requires every Georgia law enforcement agency to adopt its own written pursuit policy, and that is where the actual “when we can and can’t chase” rules live.¹²

What O.C.G.A. 40-6-6 Actually Says

The statute’s real title is “Authorized Emergency Vehicles; Pursuit of Fleeing Suspects.” Nothing in it limits pursuits to violent felonies or forces officers to weigh the seriousness of an offense before giving chase. It allows pursuit of “an actual or suspected violator of the law,” which covers everything from a minor traffic offense to a violent crime.¹

During a pursuit or emergency response, the driver of a law enforcement or other authorized emergency vehicle may:

Park or stand in places normally off-limits under traffic law.
Proceed past red lights and stop signs after slowing down enough for safe operation.
Exceed posted speed limits, as long as doing so does not endanger life or property.
Disregard rules on direction of movement or required turns.¹

These privileges only kick in when the vehicle is running both an audible signal, such as a siren, and a flashing or revolving light visible from at least 500 feet. For most emergency vehicles that light must be red; for law enforcement vehicles, it must be blue. No lights and siren, no exemption.¹

Even with lights and siren going, the statute keeps a floor in place: the driver must still operate with due regard for the safety of all persons. An officer who tears through a busy intersection without slowing cannot hide behind the emergency-vehicle exemption if someone is hurt.

Who Is Liable When a Fleeing Driver Causes a Crash

This is the part of 40-6-6 that does the heavy lifting and the part most people are really thinking of when they say “no chase law.” Under subsection (d)(2), when a fleeing suspect causes property damage, injuries, or death during a pursuit, the officer’s decision to chase is not treated as the legal cause of that harm. The exception is narrow: the officer must have acted with reckless disregard for proper law enforcement procedures in deciding to start or continue the pursuit.¹

Even then, reckless disregard does not automatically make the officer liable. The statute says the pursuit “may be found” to be a cause of the harm. A plaintiff still has to connect the officer’s reckless conduct to the specific injury through ordinary causation principles. That is a high bar.

Separately, whether the officer’s department can be sued at all depends on sovereign immunity statutes that sit outside 40-6-6. Claims against local government entities, their officers, and employees arising from this provision follow the procedures in Chapter 92 of Title 36, which governs municipal liability.¹

Every Agency Must Have a Written Pursuit Policy

Since January 1, 2004, every state, county, and local law enforcement agency in Georgia that conducts emergency responses or vehicular pursuits has been required to maintain written pursuit policies. Agencies can draft their own or adopt a model, but every policy must address situations where a pursuit crosses into another jurisdiction.²

The enforcement is financial. Agencies that fail to adopt compliant written policies risk losing state funding and state-administered federal funding. The practical “no chase” restrictions live in those individual department policies. One agency might restrict pursuits to suspected felonies; another might allow them for any offense. The statute leaves those judgment calls to each agency and only requires that the policy exist and cover cross-jurisdictional chases.

Penalties for Running from Police in Georgia

If you’re looking for the law that punishes drivers who flee, that’s O.C.G.A. 40-6-395, not 40-6-6. It makes it illegal to refuse to stop or try to elude a pursuing officer after receiving a visual or audible signal to pull over. The officer must be in uniform with a visible badge, and the vehicle must be marked as official.³

Penalties climb sharply with repeat offenses inside a ten-year window:

First conviction: a high and aggravated misdemeanor, with a fine of $1,000 to $5,000 that cannot be suspended or probated, and 30 days to 12 months in jail. Jail time beyond 30 days may be suspended at the judge’s discretion.
Second conviction within 10 years: a fine of $2,500 to $5,000 and 90 days to 12 months in jail, with time beyond 90 days potentially suspended.
Third conviction within 10 years: a fine of $4,000 to $5,000 and 180 days to 12 months in jail, with time beyond 180 days potentially suspended.
Fourth or later conviction within 10 years: the charge becomes a felony carrying up to five years in prison.³

The minimum fines at every level cannot be reduced, suspended, or probated, and judges have no discretion to waive them. A prior nolo contendere plea, where the defendant accepted punishment without formally admitting guilt, still counts as a conviction for purposes of escalating penalties.

If You Were Hurt in a Police Pursuit

The path to compensation after a pursuit-related crash is narrow in Georgia. To establish that the chase itself was a legal cause of your injuries, you have to show the officer acted with reckless disregard for proper law enforcement procedures. Mere negligence or a bad judgment call isn’t enough. Then you have to get past whatever immunity defenses the officer and the department raise, with claims against local governments routed through the separate procedures in Chapter 92 of Title 36.¹

Georgia’s comparative fault rules apply on top of that. Any recovery is reduced by the injured person’s share of fault, and anyone 50 percent or more at fault recovers nothing. A suspect who fled and caused the crash faces a steep climb to clear that threshold.

Federal civil rights claims under the Fourteenth Amendment are harder still. In County of Sacramento v. Lewis, the U.S. Supreme Court held that an officer’s conduct during a high-speed chase must “shock the conscience” to violate due process. In the pursuit context, that means only a “purpose to cause harm unrelated to the legitimate object of arrest” meets the standard. Reckless carelessness alone does not get you there, and qualified immunity remains available as a further defense.⁴

Put together, Georgia law doesn’t tell officers they can’t chase. It tells them how to do it, requires their agencies to put rules on paper, punishes drivers who run, and makes it difficult, though not impossible, to hold the pursuing officer legally responsible for what the person fleeing then does.