Gang members are far more clever about selecting their targets. It’s possible these rednecks may have had nefarious intent (racially motivated, perhaps?) but a genuine gang ritual would have gone 187 as soon as you stopped at the red light.
(No joke.)
Glad you’re okay, though – and yeah, if your car was really on fire, you would’ve known.
It wasn’t a race thing. These were a couple of youngish (early twenties) white guys who looked like they’d been out clubbing. The driver, who did all of the talking, was kind of a baby-faced wholesome-looking guy of the type I think most parents would like their daughters to date (and whose looks would probably lead people to think he was innocent and believable), and the passenger was sort of a hipster in a fedora hat. But they were hanging back at first, obviously expecting me to pull over in front of them, and the sparks thing was clearly bullshit, so who knows what their motiviation was.
Thanks. 
What they should have said: “I like your headlights, too, Honey.” 
according to a fire marshall friend of mine, even if you drop a lighted cigarette in a gas tank, chances are slim that the tank will blow up. the gas fumes are too thick to allow air to get to the combustible material, therefore preventing fire.
basically its: combustible whatever + air + ignition source = fire.
or boom in some cases. ever seen that bit at the beginning of that dustin hoffman flick ‘outbreak’ where they use an air-fuel bomb to eradicate the big bad? a veteran pal of mine said the movie makers got it right.
all that aside, there is no way in HELL i’d personally want to put the cigarette vs gas tank theory to the test and - what **Starving Artist **said: better to be safe than sorry, *especially *if you’re a woman driving alone.
‘just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.’ :eek:
Ah, drunken frat boys. In that case, they were almost certainly just messing around. (Been there, done that…)
I thought you were supposed to speed away only to find they’d been trying to warn you about the killer in your back seat (or is that only for frightened females driving alone?)
Yeah, my friends and I used to pull pranks at that age too, but these guys didn’t appear to be drunk, and like I said, they appeared to be trying to get me to pull over in front of them, and even after they turned off they were driving slowly as if to see whether I was gonna pull over. If it hadn’t been for the way they seemed to be trying to sucker me to the curb I would have been more inclined to think it was a prank. Even my twenty-three year old neice, a veteran of the club scene, thinks they were out to “jump” me.
That does make the activity a bit unusual because the behavior you experienced is often aimed at women. Or maybe women just report it more often. My apologies.
Gang members really do this kind of stuff? I just assumed most of those stories were ULs.
No problem at all. Besides, I have NO worries about being mistaken for a woman in off-board life, so I’m not touchy about it anyway.
Something similar happened to me years ago. Cellphones weren’t out very long then and I didn’t have one yet. I’m only mentioning it because it gives a time frame and it’s what made me get one.
I was driving home from work–sunny summer day during rush hour. My car was old and the AC didn’t work so I had the window opened. A jeep with 4 guys pulls up next to me as I’m driving and they yell something about my back tire. I’m going approx. 50mph and figured (1) if that were true I’m sure I would feel something and (2) while I was on a highway that had strip malls and things along the way, I happened to be in an area where there was nothing. I knew there was a carwash about a mile or so farther up the road so I figured I would stop there to call and get help. I figured if I ruined a rim riding on it to get help, so be it. It was better than being stuck in the middle of nowhere.
As I approached the car wash and started slowing down, the jeep pulled behind me and slowed down too. But when I pulled into the car wash parking lot, they took off like a bat out of hell. When I got out of the car to check the back tires, it turned out there was nothing wrong with them.
I’m female and while the highway was busy busy busy, who driving by would think anything of 4 guys helping a woman with her car if I had pulled over to the side. While they were robbing me or stealing the car… Ha!
A few months later when I was buying a new car, the salesman was telling me about a car phone. By that time I had purchased a cell phone (they were big mothers then) and pulled it out of my purse to show him. He laughed and said “women and their phones”. So I told him the story. Up until then I couldn’t figure out why they would want to steal my car.
But this guy knew. He said “to use it as a getaway car”. It was a very nondescript white boxy Buick. Yup, made sense to me.
Sounds like you dodged a bullet too. Prior to this thread I had no idea this kind of stuff happened to women so much. (My neice is attractive and when I tried to warn her about guys honking and trying to get her to roll her window down she said “Oh, that happens to me all the time.” :D)
You betcha. But it’s not so much to join the gang itself, as it is to gain confidence with the upper ranks – test of loyalty, defiance of the law, etc. Watch New Jack City for a reasonably accurate (albeit fictional) example.
TT?
Tough Tit
Tingly Twat
Two Toes
Tiny Tooter?
Throw me a fricken’ bone.
It’s from The Net – I forget what it’s actually called in the movie.
Yup. Listened to my gut feeling, not to stop right away. I ALWAYS listen to my own personal inner early warning system–even if I don’t understand why right away. 
I’m older so I knew they’re weren’t calling out to me because they wanted a date. LOL!
You should have replied, in a calm, unsettling voice, “What are you, a police officer?” and then stare at them with a blank expression on your face until they take off before the light changes. 
It might not be a bad idea to call the police in that area to report what happened and what the guys looked like. It might be helpful if they end up victimizing someone else.
Glad that everything turned out okay for you. It’s scary how some people will try to take advantage of others out there.
This is a good idea, although for it to be reportable you’d have to tell them you were in fear for your life or property (entirely plausible.) The police won’t do anything about your incident, of course – but in the off-chance that these guys were up to no good and eventually harass someone else, it would be good for the cops to have them on record.
Heh – I do this kind of trick all the time, it’s amazing how efficiently it works. Even got away from a group of South L.A. gang-bangers (no joke) merely by “blanking out” and acting as if I were on the verge of pulling a Columbine. Wouldn’t recommend it though, unless you’re prepared for them to call your bluff. 
Another thing that they steal cars for is spare parts. Steal an older car, strip it for the parts, and sell them. Oddly enough, this means that there is more demand for old stolen cars than new ones. Not a lot of demand for parts for 2011 whatevers yet.