Ghost cars — or cars with fake, obscured, or mismatched license plates — continue to wreak havoc on city streets despite years of increased enforcement, and are more likely to violate New York City traffic laws than their law abiding counterparts, according to a new report out of the City Council.
Investigators at Council’s Oversight and Investigations Division studied the traffic records of out-of-state ghost vehicles they observed parked across the city. Vehicles in the survey with mismatched plates accrued 49 percent more camera violations for speeding in school zones and 74 percent more tickets for blocking a fire hydrant than cars with matched plates, the reported released on Thursday said.
Council staff looked at over 3,500 vehicles parked on city streets with out-of-state plates, specifically in areas with a high level of out of state cars. Nearly one-fifth of the 768 non-New York-plated vehicles they observed displayed license plates that were not registered to the vehicles…