Thursday’s Headlines: Ghost Car Update Edition

It’s not all bad news out there! On Wednesday, Mayor Adams offered a pretty nifty update on the city’s effort to crack down on ghost cars — cars without license plates or with covered or defaced plates.

As you know, we’ve been obsessed with this topic even before Jesse Coburn’s Polk-Award-winning series on the scandal of illegal temporary tags. We have meticulously covered the problem of cops obscuring the plates on their personal cars, how city cameras are fooled by fake souvenir plates sold by the dozen on Canal Street, how many people are actually doing this, and how badly the city was cracking down.

In fairness, that was then. Thanks in no small part to all our coverage and, frankly, my ongoing “Criminal Mischief” campaign to expose members of the NYPD, FDNY and other agencies who deface their plates, the Adams administration can legitimately say it is doing better.

On Wednesday, the mayor and new Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch provided new numbers: Since Sept. 12, a Sanitation Department-led task force with the NYPD has towed away 5,119 ghost cars, or roughly 80 cars a day (the task force works five days a week). That’s far and away the city’s best effort on this problem (earlier task forces fizzled). Gothamist also covered the presser.

But there’s a new specter on the horizon: With congestion pricing nearing, a rasher of entrepreneurs is popping up to provide next-gen technology for scofflaws who want to evade cameras. Gone are the clunky opaque license plate covers or fake leaves that any traffic enforcement agent can spot. Now these criminals are camera-deflecting decals that are perfect replicas of license plate letters.

Here’s one company’s TikTok come-on:

Another company, Alite, sells “Nanofilm Ecoslick” letters — at $17 a pop — “to help motorists avoid … the constant stress” of speed cameras (you know, it’s a lot less stressful to just follow the law).

“Drivers are often confronted with mobile cameras that can appear in the most unexpected places. This creates nervousness behind the wheel, especially on unfamiliar roads,” states the website. “With Nanofilm Ecoslick license plate, the driver no longer has to worry about being caught by cameras.”

Obviously, I ordered a few letters and they arrived in a few days … from war-torn Kyiv. I put them on a friend’s plate. And, yes, they work: When photographed with a flash, the Nanofilm Ecoslick letter disappears.

I emailed the company to explain how they can sleep at night knowing they are helping people drive recklessly but, as I expected, heard only crickets. But Mayor Adams was asked about such companies at his presser yesterday (turns out, WPIX was also on this story independent of me … great minds think alike, apparently).

“Technology moves at a fast pace, and law enforcement must move at a faster pace,” he said, vowing action. “There is a level of creativity with obstructions … to stop from detection. This is more than just stopping [paying tolls], but it’s really stopping detection when someone commits a criminal action. So it’s crucial that we get in front of this.”

We wish Hizzoner good luck. Unlike Amazon and other companies that the city has cowed into submission before, the Alite website has a domain name linked to the Cocos (Keeling) Islands off the coast of Australia. I also reached out to the governing body of said archipelago, but heard whatever is the South Indian Ocean equivalent of crickets.

In other news:

• The big news yesterday was the Council’s hearing on Intro 606, which would require the Department of Transportation to create a new system to register — and mint plates for — electric bikes.
  • We covered it from multiple angles.
  • Hell Gate’s corridor interview with bill sponsor Bob Holden was amazing.
  • The Daily News’s coverage was, objectively, awful. The flagging tabloid reported, wrongly, that e-bikes move at “car-like speeds” and comprise an “army whizzing pell-mell through New York’s streets.” In an effort to provide no balance, the paper said DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez was “deflecting” when he said that car drivers constitute a greater threat to pedestrians, which is “deflecting” if by “deflecting” you mean, “citing accurate statistics.”
  • The Post’s story also had multiple errors, including overstating the fatality numbers for e-bikes, claiming that the bill would require e-bikes to have a state-issued plate (it’s actually a new, city-issued plate) and claiming that the bill would cover mopeds (which it does not).
  • amNY offered a wan explainer.
  • Gothamist’s coverage was solid.
• Windshield perspective: A Bronx Council member who drives everywhere wants the city to abandon the e-scooter share program in her district even though data show that it’s popular and safe. (Bx Times)
• Times Gets Action: New Jersey is going to probe why its state police have stopped enforcing traffic laws — the subject of an earlier Times investigation. (NY Times)
• The subway was awful on Wednesday night, thanks to a power outage (full disclosure: I was caught in it). (Gothamist)
• And, finally, it’s time to praise yesterday’s donors to our annual December fundraising drive. We are so thankful that we’ll mention them by name! Thanks, Terry! Thanks, Mike! Thanks, David! Thanks, Lauren! Want to join this esteemed list? Click below.