Did You Know - Cop Cars Edition

11 Things You Didn't Know About Cop Cars

4. The Crown Victoria was such a huge success for decades because it was easy to both maintain and drive

• Structurally speaking, the Crown Vic shared more in common with a truck than a modern-day car, so when an officer crashed, it was super cheap to fix. Also, most police training is designed for rear-wheel-drive cars, which in emergency situations and some specialized police drills require different driving techniques than front-wheel-drive cars like the Taurus, and it took forever to update the training program.

9. Almost 3/4ths of American cop cars are capable of Orwellian surveillance

• Whenever you see an officer at a light and assume he or she is running plates, you're half right, since most cop cars automatically read your plates without the officer needing to do a damn thing. They'll snap your picture, too, and timestamp/geolocate the image and store it indefinitely. Unless you happen to have infrared LEDs pointed at your plate (they blind the camera, so definitely don't do that), "they" know where you've been.

Complete list (Thrillist.com)