The 44-year-old Bosnian fugitive, who was drunk, ignored police requests to stop and drove through two roadblocks.

An employee from Seitenstetten (Lower Austria) reported that his company car had been stolen on Wednesday afternoon, and police had tracked down the missing vehicle by 4pm.

However they spent the next three hours pursuing the car to Steyr in Upper Austria and then back to Lower Austria before they managed to stop the Bosnian and arrest him in St. Peter in der Au.

The man had been living illegally in Austria without a residence permit.

Two police officers from Upper Austria suffered minor injuries during the chase and several police cars were badly damaged when the stolen car crashed through two checkpoints.

"We tried to stop the car at a roundabout in Seitenstettengasse, but the driver drove towards a police officer at 100 km/h – luckily the officer managed to jump aside just in time to avoid being hit,” police spokesman Johann Baumschlager told the ORF.

“The suspect not only endangered the lives of the police, but also of pedestrians,” he added. “He was driving all over the pavements and down the wrong side of the road. It was like something out of a movie.”

Police said the Bosnian man had 1.6 per mille alcohol in his blood (the legal limit is 0.5 per mille).

He had already been stopped by a police patrol early on Wednesday morning, drunk and at the wheel of a car that didn’t belong to him. He told police that the car belonged to his nephew. He is now being held in pre-trial detention.