It’s a boy! It’s a girl! It’s a... fire?
Police in Australia have charged a 30-year-old man with reckless driving after his car caught fire during a gender reveal video. The video, which was captured by drone, shows the man doing burnouts as a thick plume of blue smoke emerges from behind his car.
The man can be seen driving on a public road as others cheer, take video, and egg him on. But it doesn’t take long before his car, a black Holden Commodore, catches fire and he abandons the vehicle. It’s unclear who owned the drone that captured the chaotic scene, but the video was seized by by Queensland Police and released to news outlets in Australia today.
The man driving the car, named as Samual Montesalvo by Australia’s Ten Daily, can be seen escaping from the vehicle after it captures fire. But he quickly gets inside again when he thinks the fire has been extinguished. Flames can be seen billowing from underneath the vehicle yet again, causing him to flee, but another onlooker quickly gets in the driver’s side of the car as well.
That was obviously a bad idea:
Burnout videos seem to be an especially popular way of telling the world the sex of your baby in Australia, with lots of other similar videos popping up on social media down under. But police are trying to spread the word that anyone caught doing burnouts risks losing their license and can even get jail time for reckless driving.
Gender reveal videos have become a strange rite of passage for 20 and 30-somethings around the globe who want to share the sex of their child on social media. But the videos have also created havoc and can sometimes result in serious damage to property.
As just one example, a gender reveal video in 2017 helped start a wildfire south of Tucson, Arizona that burned over 46,000 acres and caused $8 million in damage. A U.S. Border Patrol agent accidentally started the fire by shooting a rifle at a target, causing a huge explosion. The Border Patrol agent, named as Dennis Dickey, was forced to pay $220,000 for the stunt but did not lose his job.
The Australian gender reveal video did not damage any property aside from the man’s car.
The man behind this latest video has reportedly been fined $1,000 and lost his driver’s license for six months.