It happens all the time… in the movies. A driver is speeding along, blows by a police cruiser, and the chase begins. Often, again, in the movies, the driver pulls off some sneaky maneuver and evades the police, leaving them wondering what happened.

This never happens in real life, though. Does it? It does if you believe some people who were asked to share stories about their attempts to evade the police.

Last week, someone on Reddit asked readers if they had ever evaded the police. “Just curious who’s done it? If yes, and you want to explain how and in what, that’d be cool to,” they wrote.

It turns out many people do claim to have done it and do want to explain how they evaded police.

First, the person who posed the question shared their tale of police evasion.

“I looked in my mirror and saw them coming, so I made moves for them to lose me before getting behind me,” they wrote. “One was a trick I think I saw in a movie once, but I don’t recall which. Was driving a 914 and moved in front of and then to the right of a semi as the cop passed on the left.” They added that it looked something like this clip from the movie Fletch.

Siblings share a secret

“I was 20, driving my parents’ AWD twin turbo with my sister,” another person shared. They said they were aggressively taking a long, uphill on-ramp, intentionally losing some traction. That’s when he saw a cop on the shoulder issuing a ticket to someone else.

“I think to myself, ‘I’m at the top of second gear, by the time he gets in his car and up to speed, I’ll be long gone.’ So I kept it moving. Hit 150 mph on the freeway. Got off two exits up the road in case he radioed ahead. Swore my sister to secrecy. To this day, she loves telling that story.”

Till death do us part

In another story, a driver said they were speeding through a canyon late at night when they saw a cop coming the other way. The police car immediately turns on its lights and slams on the brakes.

“I decided to keep speeding and found the first street to turn off to and turned off my lights,” they wrote. “I didn’t know the area, but it ended up being a street that went up a hill parallel overlooking the valley. We just watched it turn around and head down the valley. … ~15 years later, my now wife still jokes about how nonchalantly I said, ‘Honey, I’m going to ditch the cops.'”

Racing to freedom

“Got into a drag race one night, spur of the moment thing,” another driver began his tale of police evasion. Naturally, as he was racing, a police car was parked on the same road.

“I booked it,” they wrote. “I spent the next few minutes in a small residential area (small town in the Midwest) with my headlights off, evading the cop. He even called in backup. I never left a half-mile radius of where he first saw me. I was doing 100 mph down one-way streets the wrong way, never using my brakes. … I managed to pull into my downtown apartment’s parking space and hightail it into my second-story apartment. My friends and I watched squad cars circle below my apartment for the next 30 minutes.”

Like ‘Grand Theft Auto 5’

“I had a memorable experience in my Q50 when creating a new route to drive in my city,” read another story. “I drive through most main streets and main highways at top speed, this run I call “City Limits.” Created a route on an app called Footpath. On this route, a cop turned his lights on when I passed him at 120. As soon as I saw him light up, I stepped on my pedal harder and accelerated at top speed for the next few miles til I got off and went back on in the opposite direction.

“I know my hometown like GTA5’s map. Every place, street, and back road, etc. Having this knowledge puts me, I feel, at a higher advantage than an average driver in my hometown. I’ve used so many shortcuts, back roads, and back streets to ‘evade’ police. As long as you’ve got the skill, power, and gas, it’s quite the silly experience.”

Motorcycles make evading easier

“When I was a grad student in Cincinnati back in the mid-90s, I was speeding on I-75 on my CBR-600F late one night,” a motorcyclist wrote. “Got lit up by a cop, but my exit was the next exit. I whacked the throttle up the ramp, drifted the rear through the light, then killed all my lights (one of my mods), slowed hard, and quietly coasted up a driveway into a neighbor’s side yard about two blocks from home. Pushed the bike behind their trash cans as two cops went screaming by.”

Want even more tales of police evasion? Check them all out over on Reddit.