Quick Shifts: The Cameras Are Watching... Everything

Each week I bring you the top stories in the auto industry along with my commentary or sometimes amusing thoughts about the craziness that goes on in the world of cars.

• Ticketing Speeders by Day, Speeding by Night
• 363 Tiny Cars, One Big Mystery
• The Cameras Are Watching… Everything
• Victoria’s Secret Called, It Wants Its Lambo Back

Ticketing Speeders by Day, Speeding by Night. An NYPD officer assigned to traffic enforcement has reportedly racked up an eye-popping 547 speed-camera violations in his personal Ram pickup since 2022, proving that sometimes the person writing the tickets may also be helping fund the system; according to Carscoops, the truck accumulated thousands of dollars in fines while the officer continued working traffic enforcement duties, highlighting one of the biggest complaints critics have with automated speed-camera systems, namely that repeat offenders can keep piling up violations because camera tickets are generally treated as civil penalties and don’t automatically put points on a driver’s license the way traditional speeding citations do, meaning somebody can apparently collect speeding tickets like loyalty rewards and still keep rolling down the road, and the irony here is hard to ignore because the same officer reportedly spends his workdays pulling over other drivers for speeding while his own truck has become something of a recurring customer in New York’s camera network, which feels a little like finding out your dentist keeps a bowl of candy bars in the waiting room just for himself.

363 Tiny Cars, One Big Mystery. Police in Tacoma, Washington got a lot more than they expected after responding to reports of a suspicious black trash bag sitting near a parked car, because instead of garbage they reportedly found 363 unopened Hot Wheels cars stuffed inside, which immediately raised one very important question: what kind of person just accidentally leaves behind a small die-cast fortune on the side of the road? According to Jalopnik which cites a Fox13 Seattle new report, the collection appeared to belong to either a serious collector or reseller since every car was still sealed in its original packaging, and Tacoma police have now taken custody of the entire stash while trying to locate the rightful owner, who will probably need to provide some very specific details before officers hand over several hundred tiny Corvettes, Camaros, and mystery machines, while Hot Wheels fans online are already joking that somebody’s retirement fund may have rolled away in a Hefty bag because if you’ve ever walked through the toy aisle lately, you know collectors treat rare Hot Wheels with the intensity of day traders watching stock futures, and honestly, finding 363 unopened cars abandoned on the roadside sounds less like littering and more like the opening scene of a reality show for grown men who know exactly which 1968 Mustang casting is worth three bucks more than the others.

The Cameras Are Watching… Everything. The growing network of automated license plate reader cameras across America is once again raising eyebrows after reports surfaced that some officers have allegedly used the systems to stalk romantic interests, ex-partners, and people they simply shouldn’t have been tracking in the first place, proving that when you hand humans a giant surveillance tool, eventually somebody’s going to use it for something dumb; according to Carscoops, the controversy centers around Flock Safety cameras, those solar-powered readers popping up on poles all over neighborhoods and intersections that can log where vehicles travel and when, technology originally sold as a crime-fighting tool but now increasingly criticized by privacy advocates who say it creates a rolling database of innocent drivers’ movements, and while the systems have helped recover stolen vehicles and locate suspects, reports of misuse are piling up fast enough to make civil liberties groups nervous, especially since some departments reportedly allowed searches without warrants or meaningful oversight, turning what was pitched as public safety into something that occasionally sounds more like digital snooping with taxpayer funding, because apparently “serve and protect” was never supposed to include checking whether your ex made it to dinner on time.

Victoria’s Secret Called, It Wants Its Lambo Back. One of the most famous Lamborghini Diablos ever built is finally back on the road after disappearing for 14 years, and yes, this one really belonged to Victoria’s Secret; according to Supercar Blondie, the pearl white 1998 Lamborghini Diablo SV became famous after appearing in the lingerie giant’s “Christmas Dreams & Fantasies” catalog, where the exotic supercar and supermodels combined to create peak 1990s excess, before the car later crashed in Colorado in 2006, received a salvage title, and seemingly vanished until VINwiki founder Ed Bolian tracked it down with the help of a private investigator and a whole lot of persistence, discovering the V12-powered Lamborghini sitting in storage with oil leaks, mechanical problems, and missing hardware before his team managed to bring the rare machine back to life in roughly 90 days, preserving one of only three U.S.-spec pearl white Diablo SVs ever built and the only one carrying the special chrome “VS” graphics created specifically for Victoria’s Secret, and honestly, if there was ever a vehicle perfectly designed to represent late-1990s America, it’s probably a white Lamborghini Diablo covered in Victoria’s Secret branding roaring around with a naturally aspirated V12 while somebody flips through a catalog wearing cargo shorts and Oakleys.