4 ms·

Did they rack up any mileage? Or was it just a fan of your aunts, filling up her tank whenever it was low?

by herodoturtle 4y ago

madaxe_again 4y ago
Probably being used for Crimes - a little old lady’s car is ideal for all sorts of reasons.
- cjrp 4y ago
  Can't imagine they'd fill it up; lots of cameras at gas stations.
  - kelnos 4y ago
    I wouldn't be surprised if the resolution of those cameras 20-30 years ago was bad enough that it'd be easy to hide one's face/features. And since the car wasn't theirs, they wouldn't care about the license plate showing up on a camera.
    - madaxe_again 4y ago
      The latter. I knew a guy who used to steal a neighbour’s car to run weed across state lines between the pet stores that ran the show. He made more than enough to fill it up, which he did, religiously, as he felt it was bad karma not to - he usually did it one village over. Dude even got the thing valeted one time, although that was because one of the aquariums sloshed. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if it was something similar - I know that the whole setup was something his boss at the pet store had devised, including the “treat the car nice, fill it up” thing, so I’d wager this was maybe a Thing. Unless OP’s aunt lived in Chicagoland, in which case it’s maybe a more specific Thing.
  - MisterTea 4y ago
    Those cameras were likely broken. CCTV was mostly crap back then. The old monster cctv cameras had tubes in them, before ccd's and so on. They had a habit of burning out, tube vacuum fouls giving blurry or little image, coax cable issues, etc. Even the CCD cameras were a pain as the recording tech was also crap. Recording was done on time lapse VHS vcr's which were really expensive costing around $1000+ USD at the time. And they only recorded one channel so you had to buy a costly multiplexer so you only recorded a few seconds of each camera losing all video between switching. Video was shoppy due to time lapse trying to record 24 hours onto one VHS tape. So after all this money was spent once something broke it was so expensive to repair they usually let it stay that way hoping the presence of a seemingly working CCTV system was enough of a deterrent. Most small mom and pop shops couldn't afford the repairs.
  - whitepaint 4y ago
    Just don't fill it up at gas stations.
  - onetokeoverthe 4y ago
    No cameras 20-30 years ago.
    - Thorham 4y ago
      There were definitely security cameras in the early 90s and 2000s, just not in as many places as now.
    - eesmith 4y ago
      What? Is that sarcasm? Yes, there were video surveillance cameras in the 1980s, hooked into VCRs for playback. And many places used them, including stores and gas stations. That's how gas stations could track down people who filled up and ran. Toll booths had them too. Even before VCRs were cheap enough, there were film-based surveillance cameras. https://archive.org/details/armedrobberyoffe0000macd/page/224/mode/2up?q=camera https://archive.org/details/armedrobberyoffe0000macd/page/22... from 1975 gives examples, including at a donut store. (And it mentions a bank where they pressed the button to film a robbery, then after developing the film found it had taken pictures of the Christmas party months before, when the button was pressed by accident.) I mean, we had webcams by the mid 1990s. It's not like Exxon couldn't afford something better for their stations.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - vandahm 4y ago
        Security cameras existed, but they very frequently didn't work. One of my college professors was murdered in a bank robbery around 20 years ago. The bank technically had cameras, but they didn't work and no one bothered to do anything about it. Consequently, there was no recording of the robbery and the police chose not to investigate the crime.
        eesmith 4y ago
        I find that hard to believe. I mean, after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 I remember seeing many video clips of the vehicle making its way to the building. Checking now, https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/the-oklahoma-city-bombing-surveiled-what-do-the-videos-show/ https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/the-oklahoma-city-... says "A 1999 Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by investigative journalist David Hoffman revealed that the FBI had twenty-two video surveillance recordings of the Murrah building and surrounding area stored at the FBI’s Oklahoma City field office." Its Wikipedia entry links to https://web.archive.org/web/20170510090822/http://newsok.com/article/2636391 https://web.archive.org/web/20170510090822/http://newsok.com... saying "Agents also examined more than 900 security videotapes". If most cameras 'very frequently didn't work' then that means there were huge amounts of non-working cameras in the area. Which seems like an expensive waste of money. I can well believe that some cameras didn't work - I already mentioned the bank robbery where the cameras had run out film months previously. In any case, the original claim "No cameras 20-30 years ago" is simply not true.
- speed_spread 4y ago
  Old ladies sleep at night.

Did they rack up any mileage? Or was it just a fan of your aunts, filling up her tank whenever it was low?

madaxe_again 4y ago

Probably being used for Crimes - a little old lady’s car is ideal for all sorts of reasons.

cjrp 4y ago
Can't imagine they'd fill it up; lots of cameras at gas stations.
- kelnos 4y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if the resolution of those cameras 20-30 years ago was bad enough that it'd be easy to hide one's face/features. And since the car wasn't theirs, they wouldn't care about the license plate showing up on a camera.
  - madaxe_again 4y ago
    The latter. I knew a guy who used to steal a neighbour’s car to run weed across state lines between the pet stores that ran the show. He made more than enough to fill it up, which he did, religiously, as he felt it was bad karma not to - he usually did it one village over. Dude even got the thing valeted one time, although that was because one of the aquariums sloshed. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if it was something similar - I know that the whole setup was something his boss at the pet store had devised, including the “treat the car nice, fill it up” thing, so I’d wager this was maybe a Thing. Unless OP’s aunt lived in Chicagoland, in which case it’s maybe a more specific Thing.
- MisterTea 4y ago
  Those cameras were likely broken. CCTV was mostly crap back then. The old monster cctv cameras had tubes in them, before ccd's and so on. They had a habit of burning out, tube vacuum fouls giving blurry or little image, coax cable issues, etc. Even the CCD cameras were a pain as the recording tech was also crap. Recording was done on time lapse VHS vcr's which were really expensive costing around $1000+ USD at the time. And they only recorded one channel so you had to buy a costly multiplexer so you only recorded a few seconds of each camera losing all video between switching. Video was shoppy due to time lapse trying to record 24 hours onto one VHS tape. So after all this money was spent once something broke it was so expensive to repair they usually let it stay that way hoping the presence of a seemingly working CCTV system was enough of a deterrent. Most small mom and pop shops couldn't afford the repairs.
- whitepaint 4y ago
  Just don't fill it up at gas stations.
- onetokeoverthe 4y ago
  No cameras 20-30 years ago.
  - Thorham 4y ago
    There were definitely security cameras in the early 90s and 2000s, just not in as many places as now.
  - eesmith 4y ago
    What? Is that sarcasm? Yes, there were video surveillance cameras in the 1980s, hooked into VCRs for playback. And many places used them, including stores and gas stations. That's how gas stations could track down people who filled up and ran. Toll booths had them too. Even before VCRs were cheap enough, there were film-based surveillance cameras. https://archive.org/details/armedrobberyoffe0000macd/page/224/mode/2up?q=camera https://archive.org/details/armedrobberyoffe0000macd/page/22... from 1975 gives examples, including at a donut store. (And it mentions a bank where they pressed the button to film a robbery, then after developing the film found it had taken pictures of the Christmas party months before, when the button was pressed by accident.) I mean, we had webcams by the mid 1990s. It's not like Exxon couldn't afford something better for their stations.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - vandahm 4y ago
      Security cameras existed, but they very frequently didn't work. One of my college professors was murdered in a bank robbery around 20 years ago. The bank technically had cameras, but they didn't work and no one bothered to do anything about it. Consequently, there was no recording of the robbery and the police chose not to investigate the crime.
      - eesmith 4y ago
        I find that hard to believe. I mean, after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 I remember seeing many video clips of the vehicle making its way to the building. Checking now, https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/the-oklahoma-city-bombing-surveiled-what-do-the-videos-show/ https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/the-oklahoma-city-... says "A 1999 Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by investigative journalist David Hoffman revealed that the FBI had twenty-two video surveillance recordings of the Murrah building and surrounding area stored at the FBI’s Oklahoma City field office." Its Wikipedia entry links to https://web.archive.org/web/20170510090822/http://newsok.com/article/2636391 https://web.archive.org/web/20170510090822/http://newsok.com... saying "Agents also examined more than 900 security videotapes". If most cameras 'very frequently didn't work' then that means there were huge amounts of non-working cameras in the area. Which seems like an expensive waste of money. I can well believe that some cameras didn't work - I already mentioned the bank robbery where the cameras had run out film months previously. In any case, the original claim "No cameras 20-30 years ago" is simply not true.
speed_spread 4y ago
Old ladies sleep at night.