# Things that you're surprised don't happen more often **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 23, 2014, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-youre-surprised-dont-happen-more-often/699371 "2014-09-23T20:35:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![jharvey963](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/54ee81/32.png) [@jharvey963](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jharvey963)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2014, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-youre-surprised-dont-happen-more-often/699371/61 "2014-09-25T16:38:08Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > How do you keep the victims from reporting the license plate numbers of the cars that blocked the traffic? It wouldn’t matter. The cars would be stolen and supposedly not traceable to the thieves. And if there was a cell phone blocker on, they wouldn’t be able to report it until after the robbery was over anyway. And as far as the getaway car, I’m assuming that they would switch cars fairly quickly after driving away. J. ---
**Author:** ![UncleRojelio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unclerojelio/32/3160_2.png) [@UncleRojelio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleRojelio)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2014, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-youre-surprised-dont-happen-more-often/699371/62 "2014-09-25T16:44:15Z")
> [@jharvey963](#): > > I thought of this scenario after seeing an old western in which thieves board a train and rob all of the passengers. This freeway robbery would be a latter-day version of that crime. > > I’ve always wondered why this has never happened: A gang of thieves steals a bunch of cars. They drive onto a freeway, get side by side, slow down, and then stop. They then get out of the cars with guns and start robbing everyone in the cars behind them. After robbing “enough” people, they drive away, leaving the freeway blocked, and make their getaway. > > … The main problem with this, at least here in Texas, is that some significant percentage of the stopped drivers are going to start shooting back as soon as they see armed robbers approaching their vehicles. ---
**Author:** ![jharvey963](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/54ee81/32.png) [@jharvey963](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jharvey963)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2014, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-youre-surprised-dont-happen-more-often/699371/63 "2014-09-25T17:07:18Z")
> [@UncleRojelio](#): > > The main problem with this, at least here in Texas, is that some significant percentage of the stopped drivers are going to start shooting back as soon as they see armed robbers approaching their vehicles. Yeah, you wouldn’t be able to pull this off in a state like Texas where many people are armed. You’d have to do it in a state like California, Massachusetts or New York where guns are less common, especially guns in cars. J. ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2014, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-youre-surprised-dont-happen-more-often/699371/64 "2014-09-25T17:13:30Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > When Obama was first elected, I was sure he wouldn’t make it to his inauguration, considering the number of people who opposed him because he was black. I’m amazed that some right-wing gun nut still hasn’t shot him, after 6 years. If Obama was shot _today_, I’d think it more likely that it would be a disgruntled former supporter. ---
**Author:** ![jharvey963](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/54ee81/32.png) [@jharvey963](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jharvey963)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2014, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-youre-surprised-dont-happen-more-often/699371/65 "2014-09-25T20:04:45Z")
> [@jharvey963](#): > > I thought of this scenario after seeing an old western in which thieves board a train and rob all of the passengers. This freeway robbery would be a latter-day version of that crime. > > I’ve always wondered why this has never happened: A gang of thieves steals a bunch of cars. They drive onto a freeway, get side by side, slow down, and then stop. They then get out of the cars with guns and start robbing everyone in the cars behind them. After robbing “enough” people, they drive away, leaving the freeway blocked, and make their getaway. > > There’s a lot of details about this that would need tweaking: they would have to have at least one extra car at the front in which they could make their getaway. They’d have to disable the stolen cars so that people behind couldn’t just drive them out of the way. Maybe taking the keys of the blocking cars would be enough. They’d have to choose a point on the freeway in which people couldn’t just drive around the blocking cars. They might need lookouts to make sure that there weren’t any cops close by in the massed cars, or to spot anyone getting out of their cars with guns. > > So why hasn’t something like this happened? Maybe the payoff isn’t big enough? Let’s say you rob 100 people, who have an average of $200 on them. That’s only $20,000. Say you also take rings, watches, cell phones, etc making the total take per car 10 times greater. That only ups the haul to $200,000. > > In this day and age, I suppose cell phones are the death of this plan. As soon as they got out of the cars with guns, 9 - 1 - 1 would be getting inundated with calls. I suppose a cell phone blocker might alleviate this problem. > > What other problems do you see with this scenario, and do you see a solution to it? For instance, people in the massed cars may start fleeing, once they see the guys with guns. To solve this, you can have extra gang members with guns in cars 10 - 15 cars back, preventing the flee-ers from escaping without giving up the goods. > > J. Another thought about this. A good potential location for this would be one of those “fly-over” ramps. It would prevent people from fleeing to the side and would eliminate interference from opposite direction traffic. J. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2014, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-youre-surprised-dont-happen-more-often/699371/66 "2014-09-25T20:32:49Z")
> [@jharvey963](#): > > Another thought about this. A good potential location for this would be one of those “fly-over” ramps. It would prevent people from fleeing to the side and would eliminate interference from opposite direction traffic. > > J. Stop giving Dominic Toretto ideas! ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2014, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-youre-surprised-dont-happen-more-often/699371/67 "2014-09-25T20:44:15Z")
> [@YogSosoth](#): > > Something I’m shocked by the low frequency but understand it is the small number of foreign terrorists that commit mass murders in the US. Let’s face it, lots of people from a particular area of the world hate us. And yet, these terrorist “masterminds” seem like they are more content to lob RPGs at an well-fortified embassy in a foreign land than kill Americans in the US. Yep. I’m shocked that we don’t see shopping malls, movie theaters or sports stadiums as frequent terror targets. I’m also shocked at how infrequent collisions are on the ski slopes. Just watching all those wankers who shouldn’t be on the slopes in the first place, it seems like collisions should happen about once every few seconds. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2014, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-youre-surprised-dont-happen-more-often/699371/68 "2014-09-25T21:23:02Z")
Speaking of freeways…dropping heavy things off of overcrossings… There actually was a brief vogue for this in Los Angeles, not too long ago. A couple of drivers were killed. It’s trivially easy to do, and very easy to get away without being caught. And…say, these things don’t all have to be bad! I’m surprised more people don’t pick up bits of litter and trash when they’re walking. I make a point of it; every time I got for a walk, I pick up at least one piece of litter. I’m (slightly) surprised more people don’t do this. ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2014, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-youre-surprised-dont-happen-more-often/699371/69 "2014-09-26T03:09:52Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > Whenever there is a school shooting, the news reporters all express amazement, how could anybody do something like this? Me, I keep wondering why kids aren’t shooting up schools every day. Me too. I was the stereotypical good girl, straight As, stayed at home and never got into trouble, and I still had a recurring fantasy that my hand would turn into a gun so I could shoot my bully. (Then it would turn back into my hand so I couldn’t be caught. 🙂 ) ---
**Author:** ![Namkcalb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c89c15/32.png) [@Namkcalb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Namkcalb)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2014, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-youre-surprised-dont-happen-more-often/699371/70 "2014-09-26T04:18:20Z")
> [@diggerwam](#): > > It stuns me that the DC sniper did not lead to a whole bunch of copycats. It’s a simple crime (as long as you can shoot) and it totally paralyzes a metro area. I was going to post that. Terrorists could do a lot of harm and terrorising if they didn’t only go for symbolic targets. Setting forests on fire, infecting livestock with foot and mouth disease, sabotaging electrical substations/sewage treatment plants, parking cars on traintracks. Are all easy and damaging. Indiscriminate mobile sniper attacks, poisoning at baby-formula factories and bombs at multiple polling stations, would be very terrorising. Granted that’d make everyone hate them, but ISIS is doing a good enough job of that anyway, when Al-fucking-Quida says your methods are too extreme, you really need a long hard think. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2014, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-youre-surprised-dont-happen-more-often/699371/71 "2014-09-26T12:25:02Z")
> [@jharvey963](#): > > I thought of this scenario after seeing an old western in which thieves board a train and rob all of the passengers. This freeway robbery would be a latter-day version of that crime. > > I’ve always wondered why this has never happened: A gang of thieves steals a bunch of cars. They drive onto a freeway, get side by side, slow down, and then stop. They then get out of the cars with guns and start robbing everyone in the cars behind them. After robbing “enough” people, they drive away, leaving the freeway blocked, and make their getaway. > > There’s a lot of details about this that would need tweaking: they would have to have at least one extra car at the front in which they could make their getaway. They’d have to disable the stolen cars so that people behind couldn’t just drive them out of the way. Maybe taking the keys of the blocking cars would be enough. They’d have to choose a point on the freeway in which people couldn’t just drive around the blocking cars. They might need lookouts to make sure that there weren’t any cops close by in the massed cars, or to spot anyone getting out of their cars with guns. > > So why hasn’t something like this happened? Maybe the payoff isn’t big enough? Let’s say you rob 100 people, who have an average of $200 on them. That’s only $20,000. Say you also take rings, watches, cell phones, etc making the total take per car 10 times greater. That only ups the haul to $200,000. > > In this day and age, I suppose cell phones are the death of this plan. As soon as they got out of the cars with guns, 9 - 1 - 1 would be getting inundated with calls. I suppose a cell phone blocker might alleviate this problem. > > What other problems do you see with this scenario, and do you see a solution to it? For instance, people in the massed cars may start fleeing, once they see the guys with guns. To solve this, you can have extra gang members with guns in cars 10 - 15 cars back, preventing the flee-ers from escaping without giving up the goods. > > J. I really doubt that the average person has $200 on them. Or that additional things stolen would amount to anything near $2000. Especially trying to sell or pawn it. ---
**Author:** ![crucible](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@crucible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crucible)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2014, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-youre-surprised-dont-happen-more-often/699371/72 "2014-09-26T13:13:16Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > In many neighborhoods in the U.S. the mailboxes are out at the end of the driveway, at the street. The vast majority of these mailboxes do not have a locking door. It’s very common for the mail to sit in the mailbox for many hours, every day, completely unsecure. > > I know mail theft happens. But it doesn’t seem to be all that common. I’ve never had my mail stolen (at least that I’m ware of), and I’ve never heard of it being a problem with family and acquaintances. We had to get locking mailboxes in central locations on our streets in Gainesville, FL; seems that, at the time this happened, twenty some years ago, the local power company, “GRU” (Gainesville Regional Utilities) would send out power bills, then people would use their clearly marked envelopes to return a check to them, often made out to ‘GRU’…for a time, someone raided all the boxes with flags up during the middle of the night, looking for such checks, and, when they found them, added a few letters, like "chek’, or ‘ely’ or anything to make it seem like a surname, then deposited it in their previously arranged bank account…withdrawing the funds before GRU sent out the next bill. ---
**Author:** ![delphica](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e9a140/32.png) [@delphica](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/delphica)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2014, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-youre-surprised-dont-happen-more-often/699371/73 "2014-09-26T14:50:38Z")
Another thing that surprises me came up yesterday at work. There are times at a college that we need to contact someone’s parents, often it’s a negative situation, like a serious disciplinary issue or even legal problem. When this happens, we go to the student’s record and get the contact information for the parents. What amazes me is that the student maintains this record, so let’s say the parent has moved or has a new phone number, the student is supposed to update that. But there is NOTHING stopping a student from doing an update that puts in a fake number, or conveniently uses the student’s best friend’s contact information instead of the parents. It amazes me how infrequently this happens (especially given the outrage that often results from contacting the parents). ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2014, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-youre-surprised-dont-happen-more-often/699371/74 "2014-09-26T15:10:03Z")
> [@leahcim](#): > > I’m always surprised that airport baggage carousels are not stolen from more often. Heathrow was known as Thiefrow for many years. ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2014, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-youre-surprised-dont-happen-more-often/699371/75 "2014-09-26T15:37:24Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > In many neighborhoods in the U.S. the mailboxes are out at the end of the driveway, at the street. The vast majority of these mailboxes do not have a locking door. It’s very common for the mail to sit in the mailbox for many hours, every day, completely unsecure. > > I know mail theft happens. But it doesn’t seem to be all that common. I’ve never had my mail stolen (at least that I’m ware of), and I’ve never heard of it being a problem with family and acquaintances. They can gladly have mine. 99% of it goes in the recycle bin. The rest are bills. ---
**Author:** ![HipGnosis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/76d3ee/32.png) [@HipGnosis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HipGnosis)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2014, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-youre-surprised-dont-happen-more-often/699371/76 "2014-09-26T16:00:28Z")
I’m surprised that more car doors aren’t ripped off when people open the doors of parked cars with traffic whipping by. ---
**Author:** ![Atomic\_Alex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atomic_alex/32/175_2.png) [@Atomic\_Alex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Alex)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2014, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-youre-surprised-dont-happen-more-often/699371/77 "2014-09-26T17:56:12Z")
Traffic seems to be a common theme in this thread, personally I’m amazed that there aren’t more head-on collisions given the number of people who seem to think its just fine to overtake when coming up to/over the blind crest of a hill on the B-roads we have around here…and if its a corner it seems to be even more attractive to them. ---
**Author:** ![EmilyG](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/emilyg/32/364_2.png) [@EmilyG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EmilyG)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2014, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-youre-surprised-dont-happen-more-often/699371/78 "2014-09-26T18:17:08Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > And…say, these things don’t all have to be bad! I’m surprised more people don’t pick up bits of litter and trash when they’re walking. I make a point of it; every time I got for a walk, I pick up at least one piece of litter. I’m (slightly) surprised more people don’t do this. I think it’s because people figure that it’s not their own litter, so they don’t want to touch it, or they don’t like the idea of touching what they consider to be garbage, even if it’s not particularly dirty. I’m somewhat surprised people who smoke inside our metro (subway, underground) stations don’t get caught more often. Though since they’re usually homeless people, maybe the police feel sorry for them and figure it’s not much use to get after them. ---
**Author:** ![crucible](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@crucible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crucible)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2014, 10:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-youre-surprised-dont-happen-more-often/699371/79 "2014-09-27T10:22:13Z")
> [@Disposable Hero](#): > > Traffic seems to be a common theme in this thread, personally I’m amazed that there aren’t more head-on collisions given the number of people who seem to think its just fine to overtake when coming up to/over the blind crest of a hill on the B-roads we have around here…and if its a corner it seems to be even more attractive to them. You must be in Scotland. ---
**Author:** ![Atomic\_Alex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atomic_alex/32/175_2.png) [@Atomic\_Alex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Alex)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2014, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-youre-surprised-dont-happen-more-often/699371/80 "2014-09-27T22:54:05Z")
> [@crucible](#): > > You must be in Scotland. Close, I’m in Northern Ireland. I take it drivers are just as nuts over there. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-youre-surprised-dont-happen-more-often/699371.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-youre-surprised-dont-happen-more-often/699371.md?page=5)