Item:

Me: “So if you don’t believe it, why not go and just try it and see what happens?”

Informant: “Yeah but if I’m wrong that’s going to be really shitty.”

In Florida, if you see an old, beat up car driving on the freeway at night with it’s lights off, don’t flash your high beams to signal it. According to the informant’s high school friends, members of gangs purposefully drive around in these conditions to bait high beam flashing. Once someone flashes their lights to try to tell the gang car to turn its lights on at night, that person is marked. What this means is that the members of the gang will drop back and follow the person to their destination. Once there, the gang member(s) shoot and kill the person. It is a form of gang initiation.

Context:

The informant said this was the distinct scenario his friends described. He said they had heard it for a few years and heard of at least one instance of it happening. While he himself saw no truth to the urban legend, he stated he would not like to go looking for trouble by driving at night and flashing his brights at cars.

Analysis:

This is an urban legend and fear that seems to be very widespread. I personally have heard similar instances of this story in Los Angeles, with variation. It’s well-recognized by many states, and almost entirely shown to not have truth behind it. While it’s hard in some cases of road or gang violence to determine exactly what the inciting event was, many reports have been issued saying this type of initiation ritual is not real. It’s a pretty strong example of how something like an urban legend actually puts a lot of people in danger — should someone be driving around without lights on, they endanger other drivers at night. Not reminding that person of their lights being off because of a fear like this could very possibly result in negative consequences for that driver and other people. For information on more instances of the story: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headlight_flashing#Urban_legend