Debunking driving myths an exhausting chore

By Hugo Martin
Los Angeles Times

The California Highway Patrol says data don't support the belief that drivers of red cars get more tickets. Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser

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.

For decades, such tales have been circulated by word of mouth. But today the Internet has provided an electronic medium for transmitting and circulating 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 at 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 such as Mikkelson, knocking down driving myths can be like trying to shove toothpaste back into the tube. 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 past 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.

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 California Institute of Technology 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 red herrings:

• 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 patrolman 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.