Spike Strip

A spike strip, also called a spike belt, road spikes, a stinger, or a stop stick, is a device that stops a wheeled vehicle by puncturing its tires, made of a row of metal barbs, teeth, or spikes 35 to 75 millimeters long set pointing upward to flatten a tire driven over them; some versions use hollow spikes that lodge in the tire and let air escape gradually to reduce the risk of a crash. The device descends from the caltrop, an ancient anti-cavalry weapon, with similar obstacles reportedly used as early as the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC, though that particular claim is not well sourced. In modern use spike strips serve as both a portable police tool and a fixed checkpoint barrier, and the United States Army has deployed them at vehicle checkpoints during operations in Iraq; concerns over officer safety led the Dallas police department to ban their use in 2011 after officer deaths, and remotely deployable versions have since been developed to reduce that risk, alongside newer anti-terrorism net systems such as the Talon, deployed in the United Kingdom against vehicle-ramming attacks on public gatherings.