- The only thing Americans love more than cars
is modifying their cars in completely illegal ways.
Now, this is America.
So, let's start with guns.
Now this is a Polish military vehicle,
but plenty of Americans see this and think,
yeah, that's exactly the car I need
to head over to Walmart.
No, honestly, I think this is probably what F1 needs
in the next season.
But there are times when having a gun
mounted inside or outside of a vehicle might come in handy.
Like when you're Nick Fury
and you need to evade a SWAT team,
or if you're James Bond.
(guns shooting)
Or when you're trying to get around the idiots
in the DC trucker convoy.
Now, obviously it's pretty much indisputable
that this looks really cool,
but it's obviously illegal to mount a gun to your car.
It's not like you can go on Amazon
and buy a rack that lets you put a gun on your actual car.
Well, there are actually lots of different gun mounts
for sale on Amazon that you can put on your car
like this Vulcan quick draw magnetic high grip
handgun mount holster,
which clamps to your car, your desk, wall,
basically anywhere you think you might want
to quick draw a handgun from.
And here's a magnetic car gun mount for just 29.99.
Now are any of these products legal?
Well, some of them are.
It's generally legal to install something
that lets you mount a weapon
to your vehicle or other surface.
But once you've actually installed loaded weapon
it's more likely to be completely illegal.
So let me break this down.
First of all, in some states you need a license
to carry a concealed weapon.
So in those states, driving with a concealed weapon
would be illegal unless you are licensed.
Now what about mounting a long gun to the car?
Not surprisingly, not legal.
In Pennsylvania for example, no person, even a holder
of a license to carry a firearm may carry a loaded long gun
in a vehicle
and you also can't get around the law
by switching to an ATV or snowmobile either
since it's generally unlawful to operate
or ride any snowmobile or ATV in possession
of a loaded firearm.
Now what about non-working firearms for show?
Now in some states you might be able to get away
with displaying a dummy firearm in a vehicle.
This is common for world war II reenacters
who use decommissioned military transport vehicles
and weapons from that era.
However, you should not assume
that inoperable weapons are legal.
Brandishing an imitation or dummy firearm
is a crime in California.
But then what about the old private land loophole?
Now it might be possible
for you to mount a 50 caliber machine gun on a Jeep
if you have the money and fire it on private land
in a state with few gun laws.
But if you drive around the neighborhood with it
even in a gun friendly state, you risk being arrested
for a whole multitude of different laws
violating brandishing laws, disturbing the peace,
perceived threatening of other people.
And you know, driving around in a weapon of war
generally framed upon by many different jurisdictions.
Even if you're James Bond.
But maybe guns per se aren't your thing.
What if you wanted to turn your car into a flame thrower?
(dramatic music)
Well, a lot of people surprisingly had this idea.
In the 1990s, a South African invented a flame thrower
called a blaster
that was mounted to the car's undercarriage.
The blaster was meant to deter carjackings
by burning anyone who attempted it.
And as you can see it definitely had the capability
of barbecuing a human.
Now it did not go over particularly well.
And the cost of the modification was so high
that only a few hundred were sold.
Still that's a few hundred of modification
that could turn your car into a human barbecuer.
But what about in the good old US of A?
Can you put a flame thrower
on the undercarriage of your car?
Well, basically no, because as I explained in a recent video
flame throwers are totally legal
and you have the right to own one as an American.
You can have a flame thrower on your private property
but modifications to a car or a truck are different.
So let's look at the kits that modify your exhaust
to shoot flames.
Amazon sells them.
You can buy older ones on eBay.
Not that you should.
If you did the hot licks exhaust kits
have a lifetime warranty.
So is this legal?
Absolutely not.
If you try this in Virginia, the state can throw you in jail
and suspend your driver's license for six months.
A lot of states including Virginia have specific laws
that prohibit devices for the emission of smoke screens,
gas projectors or flame throwers,
which are prohibited in that state.
That means that if you do anything to modify your muffler
so that smoke or flame shoot out
you could be charged with a felony.
And once you start meddling with systems
that control emissions that runs a foul
of environmental regulations.
Now, if you've ever been to a tractor pull competition
you've probably witnessed coal rolling.
Now at these competitions modified trucks and tractors
drag a metal sled filled with a weight across the course.
And the point is to determine which vehicle is capable
of dragging the heaviest weight over the longest distance.
But see all that smoke.
Some people have started what's called rolling coal
on their own vehicles.
Some guys with diesel pickup trucks
have modified their trucks to blow coal at people
who drive electric cars.
And this modification allows the driver to flip a switch
that spews a billow of dirty coal smoke out of the exhaust.
There are videos of this all over YouTube
of truckers rolling coal in the faces
of protestors, cyclists and runners
and the practices got more attention
when Texas teens flooded a restaurant with coal smoke.
The video became a hit on TikTok and now many states
make this explicitly illegal
though it was probably already illegal
under general laws of applicability.
Maryland outright banned it in 2017.
And in the states that don't specifically prohibit it.
It's probably still illegal.
You can get in big trouble
because shooting a plume
of coal smoke is number one, inherently dangerous
and is tied to other crimes.
For example, a 16 year old Texas boy
driving a diesel pickup thought it would be funny
to blow coal at eight cyclists.
When he got close to them, he hit six of them
with his truck.
He was charged with six counts of felony aggravated assault
with a deadly weapon.
And rolling coal requires a driver to have overridden
or tampered with the vehicle's emission controls
and tampering with those emission control systems
is blatantly illegal under the clean air act.
And additionally, intentionally blowing a huge plume
of black smoke at other people almost certainly qualifies
as assault and battery, maybe a public nuisance as well.
So just because there's not a specific regulation on this
it's still probably incredibly illegal.
And of course rolling coal
is not the only illegal modification to your exhaust.
A lot of people have installed
what are called exhaust cutouts, which allows you
to completely bypass your catalytic converter
and your muffler to run basically a straight exhaust
at the touch of a button.
And if you're talking about illegal car products
you have to talk to the experts
like my friends over at Donut Media, James and Jerry.
- You say friends, I say clients.
- [Jerry] Mm hmm, mm hmm.
- I see the whole world as my client.
You guys went to the trouble
of actually buying a whole bunch
of these mythical illegal car products.
- [James] We did.
- How did you get your hands on some of this stuff?
- Well, apparently even though this stuff
is technically illegal,
you can still purchase quite a bit of it on Amazon.
And if you can't find it on Amazon
then you can definitely get it on eBay.
- Right.
- It's not illegal to buy, just illegal to use.
- Yeah well, I mean, according to you.
- Like a knife.
- So, on your channel we talked about
some of these products.
We went through some of the most illegal products
you can possibly buy over on Donor Media
so be sure to check out that video
but let's talk about some of the things that you have here.
Let's do the first one here is a license plate cover.
This thing has a shade that comes down.
- So this is a remote controlled license plate cover.
Like you said, it has a little curtain.
You hit a button and it completely hides your license plate
from whoever likes to look at license plates.
- Friends, they're doing car pranks.
- Yeah, totally. - Not the police.
- Yeah only for use in car pranks.
- Car pranks or you don't want people taking pictures
of your car, exposing your license plate.
- Yeah so at the hit of a button, zoom,
you can't even see it.
I assume that this is very, very illegal.
- Incredibly illegal.
There's just no way around it.
That's not surprisingly, you can't obstruct the police
from viewing your license plate.
One might call that obstruction of justice.
- Really?
Is it really?
- Well it could be, could be.
- Wow. - Could be.
- That's more serious than I thought.
That's like what senators do.
(everyone laughing)
- You guys are fancy like senators.
- Yeah, fancy senator crimes, nice.
- And then we have,
you got an honest to goodness radar jammer.
- Yeah, there's a jammer.
So it not only detects but it jams a signal
coming off a policeman's radar gun.
- Yeah and the instructions to this thing say that
if you go through a place where it's illegal,
just turn it off.
- Yeah just turn it off and then it's fine, I guess.
But there's a number of states listed in the pamphlet
that came with this that it is illegal in
including California, where we are right now.
- I think that is under inclusive.
I think that's only a handful of the states
where it's actually illegal.
- Yeah.
- It also has some really, I don't wanna call it inaccurate
but I just don't trust the engineering that went into it.
'Cause it says it doesn't transmit anything at all.
- Yeah, because I guess if it does transmit stuff
then that's
what makes it illegal. - For sure.
- But it doesn't transmit stuff,
it uses the police beam radar.
- It takes that police beam and it uses mirrors
to send that beam back to them so that they,
it scrambles it
but it doesn't produce a scrambling signal itself.
Apparently, apparently. - Apparently.
- Call me skeptical on that.
And you have a whole variety of things that help you
not impersonate the police.
- Yeah.
- So right here we have flashing red and blue lights.
- Just red and blue.
- Just red and blue. - Yup.
- Very illegal obviously.
And then, very illegal on its own.
But then when you pair it with.
(siren blaring)
- Oh my god.
(siren blaring)
That is so loud.
It is hard to overestimate how loud that thing is.
- Yeah and if you see someone pull up behind you
with flashing blue and red lights and you hear.
(distorted voice)
- Oh my god.
- The right put your hands out on the car.
- I mean, honestly that's terrifying.
- Right, it's like being pulled over
by a real police officer is super terrifying.
What's more terrifying is being pulled over by someone
pretending to be a police officer.
- And you know, if you actually are pulled over,
the headlights are shining into your car
you can't really see the car that's behind you.
- Or the silhouetted figure
walking towards your driver's side window.
- Right.
I mean all kidding aside, I would be honestly terrified
if someone pulled me over and they were in plain clothes.
I'm not even sure I could tell
that they were in plain clothes.
I mean, that is the very definition
of impersonating a police officer.
- And I imagine that is like a very big crime.
- Oh yeah.
Yeah I mean that, of all the things
that we've talked about, impersonating a police officer
can easily be a felony and yeah.
Do not do that.
It's bad.
- What else we got.
- And then finally, I guess somewhat more benign
we have an exhaust cutout. - Yes.
That lets you avoid the muffler and play back, right?
- So this goes on your exhaust before your muffler
and there's a remote control in the car.
A vacuum tube goes up into the cabin
and then at a click of a button, you can open a valve
inside of this to bypass the catalytic converters
and the muffler making your car dump noxious gases
but also makes a lot of noise.
- Straight pipe, it's a tricky way
to straight pipe your car.
- Yeah, and I mean, so that's clearly illegal,
you can't bypass your exhaust and it'd be incredibly stupid
if someone admitted to having this device
on their car. - Yeah
like if someone admitted to having this advice
on multiple YouTube channels with millions of subscribers,
that person might be dumb.
- At the very least they would certainly
need a very good lawyer.
- Luckily we have one. - We know him.
- So if you wanna see a whole bunch
of other illegal products and some not illegal products,
that should be illegal definitely check out
our collaboration video over on Donut.
All right so let's talk in a little bit more detail
about those radar detectors and jammers
because I've been fascinated with these things for years.
If you have a lead foot and the habit
of getting speeding tickets you might have considered
getting a radar detector or scrambler or jammer.
Now what are these devices and how do they work?
Now a radar detector is a device
that detects a police radar wave that the police use
with radar guns to measure the speed of passing vehicles.
Detectors are only meant to warn the driver
that police are monitoring the area.
They don't actually interfere with radar signals
and in the US, it's not illegal to use a radar detector
unless you're in Virginia or Washington DC.
However, in all states it's illegal to use a radar detector
in a commercial vehicle weighing over 10,000 pounds.
Now why would that be?
Well, the idea is it's extra dangerous
for a commercial vehicle to go above the speed limit.
Especially since they may be hauling dangerous goods
like oil and gas or thousands and thousands
of pounds of products.
And some states have regulations
about where a radar detector can be mounted.
In California for instance, it has to be mounted
on the dashboard.
Now radar jammers on the other hand have been around
for many years, but they're usually illegal.
And here's how they work.
There's a computer in police radar guns
that measures the differential
between the reflected radar waves
to calculate a vehicle speed
and jammers transmit a signal to overpower the data
sent from the car to the police radar guns.
And the FCC regulates the frequencies used in radar guns
stating quote, "No person shall willfully or maliciously
interfere with or cause interference
to any radio communications of any station license
or authorized by or under this chapter
operated by the United States government."
And since signal jammers and scramblers
are capable of interfering with radio communications
the feds have made them illegal.
Now jamming devices cannot be certified or authorized
because their primary purpose is to block or interfere
with authorized radio communications.
And therefore their use would compromise the integrity
of the nation's communication infrastructure.
And of course another obviously illegal product
is a license plate flipper.
There's no doubt, they look cool.
They make you feel just like James Bond.
- Revolving number plates, naturally.
Valid in all countries.
- Now a license plate flipper generally allows a driver
to temporarily flip and or hide their license plate
in order to avoid detection from traffic cameras
and toll booths and police that are chasing you.
And they could also help you hide from mobsters, spies,
jealous lovers, all depending on what you're into.
Now needless to say these are completely, totally
and unequivocally illegal.
Though admittedly, there is another
potentially less nefarious reason
for having a license plate cover.
Now we live a world
where there seems to be surveillance everywhere,
both online and offline and automated license plate readers
known as ALPRs scan license plates of parked cars
or cars that are in traffic.
When uploaded to a central database they can track
all the places that a vehicle may turn up.
That means that everything about your daily habits
could be tracked because this information
is out in the public.
Now, sometimes this valuable information
is even sold to third parties like debt collectors, lenders,
insurance companies, and other shady groups.
Now California legislators considered allowing people
to simply cover their license plates when parked
and there was bipartisan support for the measure
but lobbyists effectively killed the bill.
That means that businesses still have the right
to mount ALPRs on vehicles and drive them around the city
taking photographs of every license plate.
And that also means that law enforcement agencies
have the ability to collect the same data from your vehicle.
And in 2018, the Department of Homeland security
updated its policies to give ICE,
the agency responsible for immigration,
access to license plate recognition databases.
And civil libertarians are right to be concerned about this.
As of two years ago, The Atlantic reported that vigilant,
a company that amasses this information
had collected roughly 2.2 billion license plate photos
and was capturing and permanently storing
about 80 million additional geo tag images per month.
But let's talk about a product
that I was actually surprised is very illegal.
'Cause I see this one a lot, especially in the movies.
Now fans of the insanely popular movie franchise
"The Fast and the Furious" have been eager
to buy nitrous oxide kits to soup up their cars.
Racers use these kits to give their cars a boost
in street races and on the track.
And generally speaking a nitrous oxide kit
is generally safe if it's used for 15 seconds or less,
but does that mean it's legal for you
to pretend to be Vin Diesel while driving?
Well, you can legally shave your head
but you cannot use a nitrous oxide kit
while publicly driving.
Race car drivers have the legal right to use nitrous
on the track and so do private property owners
when you're driving on private property.
And nitrous oxide is not a controlled substance.
You can buy, sell or transport it.
But when it comes to street vehicles,
it depends on the state and local laws.
California has some of the strictest laws
on vehicle modifications and aftermarket parts.
And it is absolutely illegal to have a nitrous system
without a carb certification installed
on your street vehicle in California.
Some local counties and municipalities do emissions testing
and a nitrous system would absolutely wreck havoc
on that particular test.
And Ohio is another state
that strictly regulates nitrous oxide.
It's not legal to use nitrous in a car in Ohio.
So if you buy a nitrous oxide there,
you are required to sign a form
declaring that you know it's illegal to use in the car.
But let's face it if you install nitrous oxide
on your 93 Honda civic you're probably gonna end up
like Hoovies Garage anyway.
- And button.
Whoa.
Oh Jesus, I just blew the motor.
I just completely blew the motor.
- Then getting back to some real "James Bond" stuff.
I know that when you're dealing with terrible traffic
and horrible drivers that the urge to deploy
some spikes and just blow up the tires
of everyone else that's on the road.
It's a very strong urge.
I regret to inform you that is illegal.
Now a caltrop is a weapon that has been around
for some form for thousands of years.
It's a passive weapon that projects spikes
in different directions,
preventing horses, camels, elephants and land vehicles
from moving forward.
The Ukrainian military
has been making good use of them lately.
And Doomsday Preppers are eager to buy these
as they wait for the zombie deep state
queued on COVID apocalypse.
And even some car monitors have created secret compartments
that hide caltrops to be deployed against your enemies
that are following you.
These kinds of devices are completely illegal
under a whole myriad of different general purpose laws.
But many states have specific regulations
that make caltrops and tire spikes illegal to use
unless they're used by law enforcement
for incredibly obvious reasons.
And Texas, for example, specifically banned caltrops
after drug dealers started using them.
And in Texas a person can be charged with a felony
if they intentionally or knowingly
possess manufactured transport, repair or sell
a tire deflation device such as a caltrop.
So unless you are law enforcement do not use tire spikes
of any kind.
Speaking of which, if you're not law enforcement
don't pretend to be law enforcement.
And for that reason it is illegal to use car strobe lights
that flash red and blue
because it makes you look like a police officer.
Nonetheless, you can buy some of these products on Amazon.
There's also all kinds of illegal light products
on Amazon as well.
And for the most part, buying a light that can be mounted
to a car truck isn't illegal for purchase
but all states have different rules
about which vehicles can use which kind of lights.
For example, in almost every state
only the police are allowed to use blue and red lights
on top of a car.
In many states only emergency vehicles can use red lights
on top of the car.
And some states restrict the kind of flash patterns.
And then of course there are tons
of brightness restrictions as well.
Most of this means that states don't allow auxiliary lights
that can be brighter than a car's headlights
or brake lights
because you don't want to be installing aftermarket lights
that blind the people in front of you.
So I'm sorry to burst all of your "James Bond" dreams,
but all of these products are illegal
in some way or another.
So if you do install any of these products