2009-11-13 05:53:26 - Fueled by films and social networks, the latest craze of car surfing is killing and maiming teenagers.

Police report a U.S. tourist, fell and broke his neck while pretending to be surfing on the hood of a friend's moving car, in a popular Puerto Rican beach town.

Yolanda Hernandez, police spokeswoman, announced 29-year-old Long Beach, New York, resident Jorge Geysel fell off his friend's Isuzu Trooper as he "car surfed" along a road in the west coast community

of Rincon early Saturday.

Hernandez can't yet state whether Geysel's two companions will face any criminal charges.

Car surfing, also known as ‘urban surfing’, is a type of illegal acrobatics, in which passengers of moving vehicles perform various stunts, including hanging out of the car, riding the hood, trunk, or on the roof of the vehicle, while it is moving. Some participants are even dragged behind the moving vehicle by a rope.

Others toss the car into cruise control, then exit the moving vehicle, while others prefer to have a driver behind the wheel while surfing. The death toll inflicted from car surfing stands at 51 in California, Texas 42 and Florida 42, with many more injured.

The first car surfing was popularized in the 1985 movie ‘Teen Wolf’. The movie ‘Grindhouse’ has re-popularized the craze. YouTube is also responsible for popularizing and glamourizing this particularly unsafe form of entertainment.

A report published in the Journal of Neurosurgery, says that a group of neurosurgeons, after analyzing statistics from the states with the most car-surfing injuries, have concluded that car-surfing injuries are linked with the release of the Grand Auto Theft and Jackass video game series.

“It is well documented that children and adolescents imitate what they see in the media, even when this is deleterious to their health. Adults need to channel teens' need for adventure’ into activities with less likelihood of life-altering, or life-ending, outcomes” declared Dr Ann-Christine Duhaime .

A similar unsafe trend is known as ‘ghost-riding’. A person puts an automatic car in motion then exits the vehicle and dances beside or on the car. This trend was popularized by the hit song ‘Ghost Ride It’ in 2006. The video clip came under strong criticism, due to its directions on how to ghost ride. At least two deaths have been caused from ghost riding, though some claim the death toll as high as 8.

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