Are criminals throwing eggs at windshields to stop motorists? Fact Check

Warnings claim that criminals are throwing eggs at the windshields of motorists to force them into stopping and thus making them vulnerable to further crime.

The warnings claim that victims should not operate the wipers or use spray to remove the eggs since this worsens the visibility. Many versions of the rumour claim this is a “new technique” used by gangs to attack victims. Examples of these rumours taken from social media can be seen below –

OFFICIAL MSG FROM POLICE
If you are driving at night and eggs are thrown at your windscreen, do not stop to check the car, do not operate the wiper and do not spray any water, because eggs mixed with water become milky and block your vision up to 92.5%, and you are then forced to stop beside the road and become a victim of these criminals. This is a new technique used by gangs, so please inform your friends and relatives. And most importantly do not be selfish by refusing to share this message.

If you are driving at night and eggs are thrown at your windshield.
Do not operate the wiper and spray any water because eggs mixed with water become milky and block your vision up to 92.5% so you are forced to stop at the roadside and become a victim of robbers. This is a new technique used by robbers. Please inform your friends and relatives. This also happens on interstates near exits.

Warnings that caution readers about a “new” type of crime used by gangs or robbers to make motorists vulnerable to ambush are commonplace on the Internet, but are rarely accurate and are usually needlessly alarmist. The claim above about throwing eggs at motorists windshields in order to force them into stopping is one such example.

Such warnings tend to have several things in common. These include –

– They are most prolific during the Halloween period but may be encountered at any part of the year.
– They claim to warn of a “new” type of crime, despite the warnings spreading from inbox to inbox for years.
– They are often falsely attributed as coming from various police departments.
– They describe a type of crime that is feasible, but not particularly prevalent or trending. Or new.
– They fail to provide an exact location where the crime being described is purportedly occurring, or the exact same warning is spreading with multiple locations attributed to it.

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This particular egg-lobbing variant meets all of the above criteria. Each time this is passed to us, it’s been nearing October. It has been spreading since around 2009, yet still claims to be describing a “new” type of carjacking method. Many versions of the warning have claimed to come from the police. And finally, there are no reports that suggest this time of crime is prolific, or trending. In fact, only a single isolated case from 2015 is all we could find that came from Saskatchewan in Canada with reports of three men throwing eggs at a car and then unsuccessfully attempting to enter it. It is not clear if any arrests occurred as a result of the incident.

Such warnings are often erroneously associated with “gang initiations”, or the assertion that police have issued a series of warnings to motorists, when this is not the case. As such, the egg-throwing warnings above are not too dissimilar to other carjacking warnings that often do the social media rounds, like the spurious “baby car seat” warning, or the “crying child” warning, or the water bottle in the wheel well warning. Or indeed the paper/flyer in the windshield warning.

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As we stated above, all these warnings describe a modus operandi for carjacking that isn’t exactly outside the realms of possibly, and certain feasible. But there is never any data suggesting such crimes are trending, or prolific. While isolated cases may occasionally turn up, these rarely warrant such breathless and alarmist warnings that give the appearance of a trending crime to be on the lookout for. In the case of all the above warnings, simply giving out common sense and generic advice concerning car theft would suffice to avoid such a crime.

Ultimately, this is just another warning that has been doing the rounds for years, yet continually fails to back up its claim that this is a new, trending or emerging type of crime. And in this case we have the comical assertion that water and eggs can block your vision by “92.5%”. As if such a concoction was subject to the business end of a mathematical formula.