Parked KITT Replica Slapped With a $50 New York Speeding Ticket It Couldn’t Possibly Have Earned

An Illinois museum just got the strangest piece of mail it has ever received. A black Pontiac Trans Am that’s been sitting still under exhibit lights for years was somehow clocked speeding through Brooklyn, and the bill landed on the museum’s doorstep. The internet, naturally, is having a field day.

• The Volo Museum’s KITT replica received a $50 NYC speeding ticket despite not moving in over a decade.
• A traffic camera caught a real Trans Am with matching “KNIGHT” California plates speeding in a Brooklyn school zone.
• The same plate is tied to five other unpaid New York City violations dating back to late 2024.

How a Stationary Movie Car Got a Moving Violation

An Illinois museum received a speeding ticket from New York alleging its replica Knight Rider car was caught on a traffic camera, but the car hasn’t moved in over a decade. The Volo Museum revealed on social media that it received notice in the mail that its 1982 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, a replica of the talking car KITT from the 1982-1986 TV series Knight Rider, was caught on camera going 36 mph in a 25 mph zone on Ocean Parkway in New York City.

So how does a parked car get a moving violation? The car in the traffic camera photo bears a California novelty plate reading “KNIGHT,” which matches the plate on the museum’s car. Somewhere in the bureaucratic shuffle between New York’s camera system, California’s DMV records, and Illinois’s museum inventory, a real speeder’s plate got linked to a movie prop.

The Mystery Driver Has a Rap Sheet

This wasn’t a one-time glitch. The license plate is also connected to five other unpaid traffic violations in New York City since late 2024, city records show. Someone is driving an extremely accurate KITT lookalike around the five boroughs, racking up fines, and quietly leaving an Illinois museum to take the blame.

According to the California Department of Motor Vehicles, a person with the last name Knight renewed their registration for the state plate KNIGHT in March. Whether that registered owner and the Brooklyn speeder are the same person remains anybody’s guess. Replica KITTs aren’t exactly rare either. The Facebook group Knight Rider KITT Car Club for people who own replicas has nearly 19,000 members, scattered everywhere from California garages to small towns like Richmond, KY, where vintage muscle cars still pull crowds at weekend cruise-ins.

How NYC’s Speed Cameras Work (And Where They Got Confused)

New York City is authorized by state law to operate up to 750 cameras with speed detectors. When a camera catches a speeder, it records photos of the vehicle and its license plate. Staff at the city’s Department of Transportation review the violations and mail tickets to the vehicle owners if the vehicles were going more than 10 mph over the speed limit. That review process is exactly where the breakdown happened. A novelty California plate that isn’t tied to a registered vehicle somehow ended up cross-referenced with the Volo Museum’s unregistered display car.

How the city linked the plate to the museum was not immediately clear. City officials did not respond to email and phone messages Wednesday.

The Museum’s Tongue-in-Cheek Response

Rather than panic, Volo’s staff leaned all the way into the absurdity. The museum is having fun with the ticket trouble on its social media accounts. It recently changed its header on its Facebook page to “Home of the Knight Rider KITT that famously got a speeding ticket in New York City without ever leaving its exhibit in Illinois!”

Then came the punchline heard around the internet. “Does anyone have David Hasselhoff’s number?” the museum asked on Instagram. “He owes us $50!!”

Marketing director Jim Wojdyla is taking the situation in stride. “We want to find out who this Knight Rider guy is because, birds of a feather. We just want to know is this from a museum, is this just a guy that built this car as a hobby? And it looks pretty damn accurate. We’d like to meet those guys,” he said. The museum has requested a hearing challenging the ticket.

A Quick Refresher on KITT Itself

“Knight Rider” starring David Hasselhoff as a crime fighter aired on NBC from 1982 to 1986 and featured KITT, the black Trans Am with a snarky talking computer. Around 20 KITTs were built for the production, but only five originals remain, according to Road & Track magazine. The rest of the black Trans Ams roaming the country are replicas built by fans, which is exactly why a vanity plate alone isn’t enough to identify any single car.

What Happens Next for Volo’s Famous Trans Am

The museum’s hearing should sort out the $50 question pretty quickly, especially since security footage shows the car parked at the exhibit on the date of the violation. The bigger mystery is whether NYC will ever track down the actual Brooklyn speeder behind those six unpaid tickets. Until then, Volo’s KITT has accidentally become the most famous unmoving car in America, and the museum is happily milking every minute of it.