After watching this video of Brazilian police ramming a suspected drug-smuggling plane with their car to prevent it from taking off, I’ve realized that Hollywood has once again lied to me. My last exposure to Brazilian law enforcement was courtesy of their portrayal in 2011′s Fast Five, in which the country’s police force was presented…
Tag Archive: government legal automotive issues
ACLU sues LAPD and Sheriff’s Department over license plate scanners
Both the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and the Los Angeles Police Department have become big fans of cameras that capture license plate numbers and check them against information in registration and criminal databases. The Sheriff’s Department uses 47 fixed cameras and has 77 squad cars with the equipment, the LAPD has gone from having 12…
NHTSA opens investigation into Ford Super Duty trucks over steering woes
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has launched an investigation into certain 2008 Ford F-250 and F-350 Super Duty pickup trucks. The investigation covers some 340,000 trucks after the government agency received five complaints of steering box failures. Owners claim internal failures resulted in the complete loss of their vehicles’ control. In one case, steering…
More drivers than ever are dying on US roads
Our sister site, AOL Autos, reports more people are dying in car accidents in the US than ever before. Fatalities jumped by 5.3 percent last year to 34,080 deaths, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The increase is due in part to the fact that Americans are also driving more than ever before,…
2005-2007 Corvette investigated for faulty headlamps
The Detroit News reports the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened an investigation into 103,374 Chevrolet Corvette models built between 2005 and 2007. The administration is currently looking into a headlight issue after receiving 30 complaints from owners saying that the vehicle abruptly lost both low beams. Demonstrating its uncanny affinity for the obvious,…
Treasury to begin selling off more GM stock
Reuters reports that earlier this week the US Treasury announced the sale of another tranche of General Motors stock. It didn’t say how many of the 241.7 million shares it holds in the automaker it would sell, nor exactly when – the discretion apparently intended to keep hedge funds from profiting from the situation. The…
VPG Autos ceases operations
In the span of about a month, four start-up car-building companies in the US have encountered serious problems. Fisker laid off 75 percent of its employees, Coda filed for bankruptcy, Carbon Motors pulled out of its Indiana assembly plant and now VPG Autos has ceased its operations. VPG has not officially filed for bankruptcy, but…
Why Italians are no longer buying supercars
Italy is the wound that continues to drain blood from the body financial of Italian supercar and sports car makers. The wound was opened by the country’s various financial police who decided to get serious about superyacht-owning and supercar-driving tax cheats a few years ago, by noting their registrations and checking their incomes. When it…
Returning war vets at higher risk for vehicle crashes
David Brown of The Washington Post has published a piece on a little-known risk to returning veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars: motor vehicle crashes. According to the report, which sources both professional research and observations of service members, vets and their counselors, 75 percent of returning vets have a higher rate of fatal…
Tesla to earn $250 million from sales of California environmental credits
Tesla Motors is expected to release quarterly earnings figures within the next few days, and the Silicon Valley automaker is thought to have attained profitability for the first time ever. As it turns out, a good bit of that profit will reportedly come from the State of California. According to an article from the LA…