Social media has been around for a long time now. Thanks to their popularity, many social media ‘trends’ come and go all the time, some lasting longer than others. Among these trends, ‘challenges’ have also become quite common in the past few years.

A social media ‘challenge’ is basically a dare. One person does it and shares it with all of their friends, directly or indirectly encouraging them to do the same. There are many reasons people take part in social media challenges, sometimes just to join in the fun while others do it as a result of FOMO (or a fear of missing out).

Like anything else in life, there are the good, and then there are the bad and outright dangerous ones. Good social media trends are the ones that help to create awareness for noble causes, like the Ice Bucket Challenge that created awareness of the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS.

As for the bad ones, well, there are too many to count. In this article, we’re going to look at a few of the bad social media challenges involving cars, and why you should completely avoid participating in them.

Do Not Try This Yourself

First and foremost, let’s be clear: the purpose of this article is to create awareness of these social media challenges so that you can understand why they’re bad in the first place. No matter how tempted you might be, and no matter how much your friends might encourage you, avoid these challenges at all costs. The likes you might get are simply not worth the potential injuries and damages these challenges could cause.

Kiki Challenge/In My Feelings

One of the most recent social media challenges involving cars is the Kiki Challenge, also known as the ‘In My feelings’ challenge. In this challenge, the driver slows down their vehicle while a passenger hops out. With the passenger door open and the car still moving, the passenger then dances along to the song ‘In My Feelings’ by Drake as the driver films the entire act.

Even from the get-go, you can see why this is incredibly dangerous. For one, the car is still moving. At any speed, a moving car can still cause injury and damage if it gets into a collision. Second, the passenger is performing the entire act in the middle of the street, in many cases while cars are coming from the opposite direction. Last but not least, the driver themself is distracted, holding the camera steady to record the entire act.

Check out the Youtube video above and you’ll see that people doing the Kiki Challenge have gotten seriously hurt and that this act is not something you’d want to imitate even on an empty street. Safe to say, dancing next to a moving car (with an open door, no less) is never a good idea.

Car Surfing Challenge

As if dancing next to moving cars wasn’t dangerous enough, some social media users also engage in challenges involving car surfing. The term itself requires very little explaining; it involves people surfing on cars by standing on the vehicle as it speeds down a road or highway.

To make matters worse, car surfers are never wearing any form of safety gear like protective clothing or even helmets (not that any of these would make car surfing a good idea!).

On top of that, there are the dangers posed to those recording such acts. Typically, the people recording the video will either be dangerously on the side of the road, in a second vehicle following behind or sticking their arms and phones out the window of the car that’s being surfed. None of these is safe, of course.

As you can see from the Youtube video above, the dangers are clear. Even with a car going only at 25 mp/h (or 40 km/h), the injuries that happen when falling off a car is absolutely horrible.

Cha-Cha Slide

The last example here is the ‘Cha-Cha Slide’ challenge that’s become popular on the social media platform TikTok. This one is also done to a soundtrack, specifically the song ‘Cha Cha Slide’ by DJ Casper which came out decades ago. In the song, the lyrics include phrases like ‘slide to the left/right’ and ‘criss-cross’, during which drivers will serve their cars according to the lyrics.

Granted, this particular challenge doesn’t involve people standing on, or dancing next to cars. But the danger is equally real. When you swerve your car left and right on a road, no matter how empty you think it is, you could end up hitting another car. Even worse, on Malaysian roads, the odds of you side-swiping someone on a motorcycle is incredibly high. 

On top of all that, if you were to do it at a high-enough speed and on the wrong kind of terrain, you risk flipping your car over entirely. 

All of this just for a bunch of likes? Not worth it. 

If you’d really want to do the Cha Cha Slide, don’t do it with your car. Follow the music video below and dance with your friends instead!

Distracted Driving In General

As an added note, please do remember that any form of distracted driving is dangerous. You might not be participating in a social media challenge at the time, but if you’re recording videos while driving, you’re putting yourself in an incredible amount of danger. As a responsible driver, your focus should always be on the road in front of you. Meanwhile, your hands should be on the steering wheel, not on your phone. 

No matter how skilled you think you are at multitasking, the risk is never worth it. Whenever you drive distracted, disaster is always just a split-second away.