Car game

Game: When running through a yellow stoplight, kiss your hand and touch it to the top of

your car

I learned this trick from one of my friends in high school, around when we both started driving, so around sixteen. We were driving to school one day and we ran a yellow light and she kissed her hand and hit the top of the car. When I didn’t repeat what she had done she seemed to get very upset and I asked her why. She said her mom had told her since she was a child that if you didn’t do something to recognize that you had ran a yellow light, you would have bad luck, most likely a car accident of some sort. Not being a very superstitious person, I didn’t believe it, however, I ended up getting in the habit of doing it and since have told many people the same story thus convincing myself it was true.

My friend believed her mother told her that story in order to make her more aware of driving. She believes that by her mother telling her to do an action every time you run a yellow light, it could make you more cautious about running a light for fear of forgetting to perform the action and thus in turn having bad luck. While I definitely do not believe that not performing the action will cause bad luck, I agree that performing this action does make you more aware of your driving. There have been many times where I’ve ended up running a yellow light and fear has stricken me because I am scared of getting a ticket. However, when I was discussing this particular game with my friend Mandy, she feels that the game is dangerous itself because you’re choosing to take a hand off the wheel while simultaneously speeding up to run the yellow light. I agree that it could be perceived as dangerous since you would be removing one of your hands from the wheel, but I think sometimes in our society, having bad luck upon you instead of just taking the small risk in order to prevent bad luck seems to prevail and that’s why I think this car game has been spread around so much.