Web Spreads Legends of Road; Frightening? Yes; True? Maybe Not

If you drive a red car, you are more likely to get cited for speeding than if you drive a white, black or brown car.

If you hang a compact disc from your rearview mirror, police radar guns won’t be able to track your speed.

The man who developed those reflective ceramic mounds on the freeway became so rich from the invention that he makes Donald Trump look like a pauper.

The preceding statements are driving myths--urban legends that are cooked up and circulated by people with great imaginations but less respect for the truth. There is no truth to the stories. None. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

Cars and driving are the subject of dozens of such tales, most of which are so far removed from the truth that you might wonder whether they hadn’t been concocted by Mother Goose herself.

For decades, such tales have been circulated by word of mouth. But today the Internet has provided an electronic medium to transmit and circulate amazing tales of driver stupidity, ingenious schemes for avoiding tickets and breathless warnings about horrible dangers on the open road.

Barbara Mikkelson, who operates an Internet listing of urban folklore (www.snopes.com), said bogus tales about cars and driving are rampant on the Web. “It reflects what’s going on in our lives,” she said.

For police and folklore experts like Mikkelson, knocking down driving myths can be like trying to shove toothpaste back into the tube.

For example, police say motorists repeatedly ask them to address this frightening story:

Street gangs have initiated new members by sending them into the streets with their headlights off and ordering them to shoot any motorist who flashes his headlights.

“This rumor comes around every year, and has for the last several years,” said Wes McBride, president of the California Gang Investigators Assn. “It is not true and never was.”

But don’t be too quick to dismiss outlandish-sounding tales. A few tales circulating on the Internet are based on fact. Consider the often-heard warning that static electricity generated when a motorist gets in or out of a car can spark a fire at a gas station.

The American Petroleum Institute and the Petroleum Equipment Institute issued a press release last month, alerting motorists to the potential for fires caused by static electricity. The press release even warned that “static season” is in the fall, when cool, dry air is more conducive to static electricity.

Susan Hahn, a spokeswoman for the petroleum institute, put the threat in perspective. She said Americans fill up with gas 11 billion times a year and static electricity has been blamed for 34 fires in the last three years. “It’s rare but it happens,” she said.

As for the rumor that cellular phones can cause fires at gas stations, Hahn said the institute has been unable to confirm any such incident.

Occasionally, bogus tales are passed along as legitimate news stories.

Consider the tale of the two hunters who were driving at night when their headlight fuse burned out. The men discovered that they could replace the fuse with a .22-caliber bullet. The story goes that the bullet heated up and fired, striking one of the men in the testicles.

Mikkelson found this bogus story circulated on the Internet in 1996 and written to look like an article from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. The newspaper ran a story that year denying that it had ever published such an article.

Here is one that is part truth, part bunk:

It is true that the reflective freeway markers--known as Botts Dots--were named for a Caltrans scientist, Elbert D. Botts. He did not become filthy rich because of the invention, however. Botts died in 1961, five years before the dots became a required fixture on California freeways.

The following myth falls under the category of a red herring:

Red cars get more speeding tickets than cars painted other colors.

The California Highway Patrol dismisses this folklore, saying there is no data to support it.

“Yellow or red or other bright colors can get an officer’s attention, but it doesn’t mean they get more tickets,” said CHP Officer Luis Mendoza.

Regardless of what color car you drive, police say, you cannot deflect the radio waves from a police radar gun by hanging a compact disc from your rearview mirror.

Sgt. Kevin Custard of the Los Angeles Police Department’s central traffic division said this myth defies science.

“That’s a neat one,” he said with a chuckle.

Some myths are so egregiously harmful that transportation officials have launched extensive campaigns to debunk them.

Police say they routinely hear motorists say they don’t wear seat belts because they worry about being trapped underwater or engulfed in flames.

The California Driver’s Handbook notes that if your car slams into a body of water, your seat belt will keep you from being knocked unconscious so you can unbuckle the belt and swim out.

Your chances of being killed or injured are reduced by 45% if you wear a seat belt, according to federal studies.

Perhaps the most stubborn--yet most entertaining--urban legend regarding the car is the tale of the escaped convict who kills with a stainless steel hook that he wears instead of a hand.

The story goes that a young couple parked in a secluded spot hears about the killer on the radio. The girl insists on going home, prompting the frustrated boy to speed away. When they arrive at the girl’s house, the boy goes to open the car door for his date, and finds a bloody hook hanging from the door handle.

The story has made its way into several cheesy slasher movies and was even published in a letter to Dear Abby.

Great story except that Mikkelson, the urban folklore expert, said there has never been a documented account of an escaped killer with a hook for a hand.

She suggests that the story was originally circulated as a way for parents to keep their teens in line.

“It’s funny--teens won’t listen when you say don’t have sex, but they will listen if you tell them about lurking madmen,” Mikkelson said.

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If you have a question, gripe or story idea about driving in Southern California send an e-mail to behindthewheel@latimes.com.