And how about the Florida plate we spotted in Brooklyn? Even though the driver covered it with an opaque shield, the car still racked up 77 tickets, including 24 speed-camera tickets<\/a>.<\/p>\n And the only 10 I see when it comes to this Tennessee plate is the 10 tickets it\u2019s accumulated since early 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m surprised how many people I see that supposedly live in Texas on the Upper West Side,\u201d \u201cGridlock\u201d Sam Schwartz, a former New York City traffic commissioner, once joked to Streetsblog<\/a>.<\/p>\n Where to find them<\/p>\n The map below shows the number of parking and automated camera tickets issued to out-of-state cars between May 1 and Aug. 11, 2026. The NYPD\u2019s Midtown South Precinct had the highest volume of tickets for out-of-state cars \u2014 over 25,000 in 102 days. The data shows heavy concentration in Manhattan precincts, with outer boroughs seeing patchier but still significant numbers of violations.<\/p>\n The NYPD gave out upwards of four million parking tickets to out-of-state vehicles between Aug. 1, 2025 and Aug. 1, 2026, according to NYC Open Data. The majority of those, excluding the tri-state area and Pennsylvania, were from distant territories such as Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts, Maine and Virginia.<\/p>\n The map below shows the most common out-of-state plate in each NYPD precinct (after eliminating plates from the tri-state area):<\/p>\n Fraud economics<\/p>\n Car owners\u2019 frequently bemoan the high cost of their choice to own a private vehicle in the most transit-rich city in the Western world \u2014\u00a0and that constant feeling of aggrievement convinces them they are justified in small-time fraud.<\/p>\n Car insurance rates across states factor in traffic, perceived risk, severe weather and other arcane factors. In Vermont, annual insurance rates average about $1,568.<\/a> In New York City, some car owners pay more than twice that \u2014\u00a0so registering out-of-state seems like a no-brainer for such entitled drivers.<\/p>\n It is very rare to be caught and prosecuted for insurance fraud, but it is fraud nonetheless; state law requires residents to get a New York registration and license plate within 30 days<\/a> of moving here. Driving without New York State registration after that point can subject a driver to a fine up to<\/a> $300 and even 15 days in jail<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Those fees pale in comparison to the costs for the law-abiding New Yorkers. A 2025 City Council investigation<\/a> found that out-of-state vehicles with faulty registration had more than double the amount of outstanding fines than vehicles with plates that matched the vehicle\u2019s registration. And there\u2019s a cost to all of us: A 2025 audit report from the city comptroller office<\/a> estimated the city loses over $100 million in speed camera revenue each year due to license plate rejections.<\/p>\n And insurers claim<\/a> they lost $50.2 million to fraud\u00a0last year<\/a>, up 20 percent from $38.9 million when Gov. Hochul took office\u00a0in 2021<\/a>, according to a Streetsblog review of\u00a0data collected annually<\/a>\u00a0by DFS. And that\u2019s just the amount insurers know of.<\/p>\n Beyond that is the safety angle that is always top of Streetsblog\u2019s mind: Vehicles with faulty registration had 49 percent more speed camera violations and 74 percent more fire hydrant violations than vehicles with plates that matched their registration, according to the City Council investigation.<\/p>\n The \u201chigh risk\u201d created by out-of-state drivers \u2014 who speed more than average and aren\u2019t registered in New York \u2014 makes insurance companies charge more for everyone else because of the heightened danger that the bad apples cause inside the Big Apple. That motivates even more drivers to register out-of-state to avoid big bills \u2014 compounding the problem while punishing law-abiding New Yorkers. (Jimmy and the Jaywalkers even has a song about it<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Running it down<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how all of the 50 plates we spotted break down. Every one of these out-of-state cars received tickets, which belies the notion that these vehicles belong to tourists:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor Mamdani set off a firestorm this summer when he sent letters to thousands of city homeowners instructing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370761,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63,52479],"class_list":["post-370760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-promoted"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/50-state-montage.jpg\")
A collage of all 50 license plates collected by Streetsblog. Photos: Full Staff Effort<\/p>\n