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The fear may have more to do with the violation of expectations than with the threat itself. "People know they could be killed in an auto accident, so when they get into their cars, they aren't afraid of the 45,000 people getting killed on the highways," says Lawrence W. Sherman, professor of criminology at the University of Maryland. "But they don't expect to be attacked by criminals when they are in their cars; that's why the criminal attacks engender much more fear."
Among the shattered expectations are notions about where crime happens, and to whom. While young men in the inner cities are by far the most likely group to be the victims of violent crimes, carjackers have begun recently to target women, the elderly, tourists -- the conspicuously vulnerable. And they hit in places that were supposed to be off limits. In big cities, soaked with drugs and guns, residents make certain concessions to safety. They learn what streets to avoid at night, what neighborhoods to avoid at all times, what activities to avoid at all costs. But now the generation that fled the cities to escape violent crime finds that crime commutes too.
The auto model makes no difference in the cases where the thief is after the driver's belongings more than the car. "The consensus would be that carjacking is a crime of opportunity," says Charlie J. Parsons, special agent in charge of the Los Angeles office of the FBI. "Most of them occur within 15 seconds, and it's not a situation where the perpetrator stakes out the victim for several days and plans the crime. They're standing on a street corner, and there's someone with the windows down, and they're vulnerable, and bam! -- it happens."
Out of each famous case has come an official spasm. The Basu case prompted Congress to classify carjacking as a federal crime with a prison sentence of at least 15 years, and a life sentence if the victim dies. One of the two men involved in the Basu carjacking has been sentenced to life; the other is on trial and may receive capital punishment.
The murder of a German tourist in April sent out global shock waves -- and sent Florida officials scrambling to shore up their image as the Sunshine | State. Driving in from the airport in an Alamo rental car, Barbara Meller- Jensen had taken the wrong turn and ended up in one of Miami's poorer neighborhoods. When she felt her car hit from behind, she got out to see what had happened. Then, as her six-year-old son watched, thieves beat her, robbed her, climbed back into their car, gunned their engine and drove over her head. To counter the impression that renting a car is an invitation to violence, the Florida legislature has outlawed license plates as well as company logos that mark cars as rented or leased. It is not only that visitors are more likely to get lost and wind up in the wrong neighborhood. They are also assumed to be carrying more cash -- and to be less likely to come back and testify if they are robbed. "When one officer asked a kid about his new Nike Air Jordan tennis shoes," says Miami police sergeant Clay Camil, "he remarked, 'Oh, a tourist bought those.' "