The flashing headlights gang initiation warning is an urban myth

Have you ever seen or heard the widely-shared warning that you shouldn’t flash your headlights at an oncoming car with its lights off because you could become the victim of a deadly gang initiation? A viral thread on X with over 2 million views claims this warning is actually an urban legend.

THE QUESTION

Is the flashing headlights gang initiation warning real?

THE SOURCES

• National Gang Center, a project funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), the Office of Justice Programs (OJP) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)
• Austin Police Department
• Stockton Police Department
• Royal Canadian Mounted Police
• New Zealand Police Department
• Chubb Fire & Security SA
• “Random Violence: How We Talk About New Crimes and New Victims” by Joel Best, Ph.D., professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware
• Jan Harold Brunvand, retired American folklorist and professor emeritus of English at the University of Utah

THE ANSWER

No, the flashing headlights gang initiation warning is not real. It’s an urban myth.

WHAT WE FOUND

Online posts warning drivers not to flash their headlights at oncoming cars because they could become the victim of a deadly gang initiation ritual is a long-running hoax, according to all of our sources. Iterations of these warnings have circulated in the U.S. and other countries since the 1980s and 1990s.

On its website, the National Gang Center, a Department of Justice project, called the warning an example of misinformation that is sometimes “fueled by media reports or law enforcement groups that generalize from one incident to all gangs or gang members.” But the project said, “there were few, if any, recorded incidents of such behavior.”

“It's been documented as an urban legend throughout the U.S., and specifically in Austin — there's not been a single incidence of anyone falling prey to violence due to flashing their lights at someone, and specifically not with gang members,” Austin Police Sgt. Robert Hawkins told VERIFY partner station KVUE in 2017.

Jan Harold Brunvand, a retired American folklorist and professor emeritus of English at the University of Utah who tracked urban fables by researching newspaper articles, interviewing law enforcement officials and hunting down tips, called the flashing headlights gang initiation warning a “myth” and “bogus” in 1999.

Brunvand told The Record, a daily newspaper based in Stockton, California, that the myth’s origin could be traced back to the 1992 shooting death of Kelly Freed. Freed was killed during a traffic misunderstanding in the city on Sept. 18, 1992. But police records showed the shooting had nothing to do with gangs, according to the newspaper, and the Stockton Police Department insisted the warning was a “baseless urban myth.”

Joel Best, a sociology and criminal justice professor at the University of Delaware, said the warning spread across the U.S. during the fall of 1993 in his 1999 book “Random Violence: How We Talk About New Crimes and New Victims.”

“Concerned citizens passed along the story via photocopies, faxes, and, of course, word of mouth,” Best wrote. “Employers warned their employees, law-enforcement agencies alerted one another, and the press cautioned the public.”

Best said another gang-initiation story claiming ankle-grabbing gang members waited to harm people in shopping mall parking lots circulated the year prior. But he wrote that “there is no evidence that either gang initiation tale was true.”

Police departments in Canada and New Zealand also debunked iterations of the warning sent via email. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the New Zealand Police both called the warning a “hoax” in official statements in 2005 and 2008.

“This email is a typical urban myth which has gained momentum,” a New Zealand Police spokesperson said at the time. “The email even states now that police are reluctant to release the information for fear that the gangs will change their tactics and dates. This is complete rubbish.”

In 2013, Chubb SA, a now-defunct security company based in South Africa, released a letter to the public debunking an iteration of the warning that featured the company’s logo. A Chubb SA spokesperson said the warning is “an urban legend which started some 10-plus years ago in America.” The company said it had been working to shut down the rumor since 2009.

The warning with Chubb SA’s logo circulated online again in 2017 and 2018, according to reports from VERIFY partner stations KVUE and WUSA. Both stations and Snopes also determined that the warning was an urban legend.