Car-surfing injuries linked to video game clips
Grand
Theft Auto IVA group of neurosurgeons analyzing the dangerous teen activity known as car surfing has concluded that its popularity corresponds with the release of the Grand Theft Auto video game series and YouTube clips glorifying the video games activity.
Car surfing, thought to have originated in the Bay Area in the 1980s, is a stunt in which the "surfer" sits or stands on the hood, roof or trunk of a moving vehicle, hangs onto the sides or is dragged from a rope trailing behind. It is also called ghost riding. From 1998 to 2006, 51 California youths died in car-surfing accidents.
The study, published in the Journal of Neurosurgery, is the first comprehensive look at the rising rate of injuries related to car surfing and why teens engage in such reckless behavior.
The authors analyzed statistics from the states with the most car-surfing injuries -- California, Florida and Texas -- and found a steady rise in accident rates starting in 2000. The increase in injuries corresponded to the release of the Grand Theft Auto video games (editions one through three) and the Jackass video game series and movie in 2002, according to the authors of the paper, from University Hospitals Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Ohio. An increase in fatalities occurred from 2004 to 2005 with the release of GTA San Andreas and the growing popularity of YouTube, the study finds. A search of YouTube archives from 2006 to 2008 produced 350 video clips showing children and teenagers engaging in car surfing.
In a study of seven car-surfing injuries at their own hospital, the authors found most injuries were to males; the average age was 13.4 years; all sustained head injuries; four suffered longterm neurologic damage.
Why would kids do this? The report is unusual because the authors conducted a broad search of statistics and popular culture to show how video games and YouTube clips appear to influence the behavior, says Dr. Ann-Christine Duhaime, in an editorial accompanying the paper.
"People do stupid things, and adolescents do some of the stupidest," Duhaime wrote, in what is perhaps one of the most accurate observations in medical literature on accidental injuries. "It is well documented that children and adolescents imitate what they see in the media, even when this is deleterious to their health."
Adults, she says, need to channel teens' need for adventure into "activities with less likelihood of life-altering, or life-ending, outcomes."
-- Shari Roan
Photo: Carlos Chavez / Los Angeles Times
Grand
Theft Auto IV Video game
There are a number of pieces of information in this story that are incorrect. 'Car-surfing' and 'Ghostriding' are two different actions, both of which are foolish.
In the most recent edition of Grand Theft Auto, car surfing is not truly possible unless playing the PC version of the game with some self-made changes to the game data, so the influence must come from elsewhere or the children simply think it seems like a 'cool' idea.
Also looking back to before Youtube debuted and before the widespread popularity of games influences for both of these activities can be found within other media which are not so aggresively targeted as games. Such as movies, television and popular music.
Video games are the hot-button issue these days and people are quick to blame, what likely would have prevented most if not all of these injuries would have been some actual, hands-on parenting which so few children are actually getting. If parents would try monitoring thier kids and maybe talking to them once in a blue moon about important and dangerous issues we would see less blame laid on media and a dramatic drop off in foolish activities from youth and a lot more accountablity from adults.
If the child can't understand the consequences of riding around on a moving vehicle at high speed then the only way they are likely to learn is through experience, because obviously the parents never took the time to monitor or speak with their children on such matters.
By the same methods that these researchers linked this behaviour to Youtube and games I could probably link this behaviour to several items such as: Young Parents, Large Disposable Income, Lack of Guidance, Low School Grades and just for fun high sodium diets. Research in these fuzzy areas as in "what influences someone to do something" can easily be made to look any way, for whosoever wishes to push thier point of view.
Posted by: Kyle Mohammed | July 21, 2009