Just Another Reminder To Wh You Should Always Wear A Seatbelt

A viral video making the rounds online shows exactly how quickly a fun car test can turn into a full-blown “what just happened?” moment after a driver was ejected from a classic muscle car during what was supposed to be a simple drift run.

The clip captures a driver taking a freshly restored 1981 Chevrolet Camaro out for what appears to be a post-restoration drift test. The car slides smoothly through the turn at first, the engine sounds healthy, and for a few seconds it looks like a pretty standard “let’s see what this thing can do” moment.

Then the driver’s side door pops open mid-slide.

Not a little crack. Not a warning wiggle. The door swings open while the car is still drifting, and because the driver apparently wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, the next frame of the video shows him being thrown straight out of the car onto the pavement while the Camaro continues sliding forward.

It’s the kind of moment that looks almost unreal at first glance. One second the driver is steering through the drift, the next he’s rolling across the ground as the car carries on without him.

Surprisingly, despite how dramatic the clip looks, reports indicate the driver avoided any serious injuries. Considering how easily that situation could have turned into a disaster, the outcome was about as lucky as it gets.

Part of the reason the incident happened likely comes down to the car itself. The Camaro in the video is part of the second-generation F-body lineup, a classic era of American muscle cars that ran through the 1970s and early 1980s. While the styling and performance still have a loyal following, those vehicles weren’t exactly built with modern safety standards in mind.

Over time, older F-body cars are known to develop issues like door hinge wear and alignment problems. The weight of the heavy doors can cause them to sag slightly over the decades, which can weaken how securely the latch holds during aggressive driving. When the car suddenly loads up sideways in a drift, the forces acting on the chassis can be enough to pop a poorly aligned door open.

Combine that with a driver who isn’t strapped in and you get the exact scenario seen in the video, a door swinging open and the driver getting launched out of the seat during the slide.

Modern vehicles are built to prevent this sort of thing. Stronger latches, reinforced structures, and constant seatbelt reminders make accidental ejections far less likely. Older cars from the early 1980s, however, came from a very different era of automotive design.

While the clip has gone viral mostly for the sheer shock value of seeing a driver suddenly tumble out of his own car, it also serves as a pretty blunt reminder about basic safety.