Watch the heart-stopping moment a driver mounts kerb to avoid police in Northampton

The whole incident was caught on a dashboard camera.

The incident on November 25 last year in Northampton was captured on dashcam by Thomas Tang.

As the clip begins, three police vehicles with blues lights can be seen travelling in the opposite direction on Kingsthorpe Road at 1.45pm.

Officers were responding after a vehicle fitted with stolen plates triggered multiple ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) cameras.

Less than a minute later, Mr Tang was turning onto Burleigh Road when the vehicle in question came into view.

The driver drove at speed onto the pavement passing the dashcam car on the left, and then narrowly avoided hitting the vehicle in front when swerving onto the opposite side of the road.

Initially, it looks like the driver is going to spin out and knock down a female pedestrian in the video, but he miraculously regains control and speeds off into the distance.

The woman looks on in disbelief and gestures with her arm to officers in pursuit eight-seconds later.

Officers later found the Blue Ford Fiesta unoccupied less than a mile away in the Semilong area.

Posting the clip on social media, self-employed Thomas, 49 said: “Either pretty good driving skills, or damn lucky he went on the dropped kerb otherwise he would have flipped.”

A Northamptonshire Police spokesperson said: “The vehicle in the video was using stolen number plates and was followed by officers after being identified by ANPR cameras.

“The vehicle was found unoccupied in the Semilong area of Northampton.”

It’s not clear if the driver was later identified by Police, however, the spokesperson confirmed that they weren’t aware of any charges that were brought as a result of the incident.

There are 9,000 ANPR cameras covering approximately 246,000 miles of roads in Great Britain, these cameras submit between 25 and 40 million reads daily to the National ANPR Data Centre.

On average there is a camera located every 27.3 miles, however as proportion are vehicle-based and more than one camera at some locations covering multiple lanes of a road and direction of travel, in reality, most journeys will be conducted without ever passing one.