Some 300 police cars with automatic braking systems are to be sent back to the garage to have the system removed, the AD said on Wednesday.

The Volkswagen Touran cars are fitted with a system known as the city emergency brake which is supposed to stop collisions. However, complaints about the system have flooded in from all over the country, the AD said.

In particular the automatic braking interferes in the way the police operate during high-speed chases and in emergency situations, the paper says. Police officers in Rotterdam and the north of the country have complained about being hurled against the dashboard when the car makes a sudden stop.

‘These things are obviously being bought by people behind a desk without discussing it with those on the front line,’ Geert Priem of police union ANPV told broadcaster NOS. The system, said Priem, makes it almost impossible to give chase or to force cars to stop.

It is unclear what the cost of removing the system will be. It can be switched off manually but that needs to be done ahead of every journey.