Teens Warned About Dangers of 'Car Surfing'

Oct. 16, 2008— -- A gregarious shell fisherman in the Cape Cod town of Wellfleet, Mass., Caleb Potter spent July 4, 2007, dressed as Yellowbeard the pirate in the town parade. Later that night, he hitched a ride with a friend to the celebration at the pier -- but chose to do so by hanging on to the back of a friend's pickup truck on his skateboard.

Today, Caleb's mother Sharyn Lindsay told ABCNews.com that her son was "probably surfing for about a mile, maybe less" when "he felt the wheels wobbling and going out of control, even though his friend was not going that fast."

The then 26-year-old flew into the air and landed directly on the left side of his head, an accident which resulted in a traumatic brain injury.

"They gave him a 7 percent chance of life," Lindsay said. "The neurosurgeon told me that if Caleb did make it, by some odd chance, that Caleb would be a vegetable."

After more than six months in several hospitals, Potter did make it. Today, his mother maintains a blog about how the incident has affected her family in the time since.

"I think on this particular day, Caleb was emotionally upset about an issue and he made a very bad judgment," Lindsay said. "It has changed our lives forever."

Videos posted on YouTube feature a dangerous form of entertainment, known as car surfing, in a variety of forms. One young man appears to be skiing down the street in his sneakers as he clings to the driver's side door while sailing down a residential street. Another, like Potter did, relied on his skateboard. A third climbs out of the driver's seat and heads for the roof as his red pickup tears down the street. He jumps off onto the street just before the truck jumped the curb and strikes a telephone pole.

While young men in particular have turned to the activity for fun, today risky practices like those are also turning heads among government health officials at the CDC.

On Thursday afternoon, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a report warning parents and teens about the dangers of riding on the outside of a moving car. The report, based on 1990 to August 2008 news articles about car surfing, reveals that 58 people have died from car surfing, and another 41 were injured.