Emily Webb was standing in the middle of the street when a car hit her, fracturing her ankle and leaving her screaming in pain.
But it wasn’t a random accident or a hit-and-run, it was an online trend going wrong.
If you type up in the words “trust him trend” on TikTok, videos will pop up that have amassed millions of views of women putting their safety at risk to prove their trust in their male partners.
It works like this:
Women stand in the middle of the road.
Their boyfriend will drive full speed, or sometimes slower, straight ahead towards their girlfriend with the aim to brake before they run her over.
There is simply no making this stuff up.
Women will post captions like “safe to say I trust you” or “trust him with my life”.
Webb, 25, lives in Australia and decided to attempt the trend herself.
She’s single, so she got a male friend to do it with her.
Footage shows Ms. Webb standing in the middle of the road, looking confident in a crop top and shorts.
She trusts her friend will stop in time, just like the other men on the internet did.
The driver doesn’t, and instead of braking in time, the car runs into the young Aussie and you can see the pain on her face as she drops to the ground.
“Stop! Go backwards,” Ms. Webb screamed. The driver quickly reversed, but the damage was done.
She dropped to the ground and screamed out in pain.
For a second there, her leg was trapped under the car, and now she’s seriously injured because of the failed attempt at the trend.
“My friend didn’t break in time and ran over my ankle, causing a potential fracture,” she told news.com.au.
But she doesn’t regret attempting the trend as the video became good content, and she’s posted it on social media.
“I don’t regret it. But I definitely do not want to get hit by a car again. I feel lucky that it wasn’t even a centimeter further. It could have been so much worse,” she said.
“It looked like a really fun, exciting trend, and we could make a cute video. I knew the trend was dangerous but social media does make it feel a lot less serious when everyone else is doing it just fine.
“I’ve learnt I can’t trust a man.”
She’s now facing a fairly lengthy recovery process, but is relieved it won’t impact her work too much.
“The injury definitely will affect my work a little bit as a content creator it limits what I can do for a few weeks,” she said.
“In saying that, I’m incredibly lucky to be self-employed and be able to work on my own schedule.”
The commentary online about the trend is mixed.
Some have labelled it too “dangerous,” and others have expressed fears that if they attempted it, their boyfriends would “accidentally” run them over.
Some have shared that their boyfriends would refuse to do the trend because they wouldn’t want to “chance” their safety.
Young people are also being influenced by the trend, even when they recognize that it isn’t safe: “I want to do this, but I’m scared,” one wrote.
