Everyone knows when Kyle Fleischmann pulls up. First they hear his souped-up minivan buzz through stoplights and race down back roads. They spot its unicorn horn—a cone-shaped air filter atop its roof—and the stick-figure family splashed across its back windshield.
Event Context
Fleischmann, who dreamed of becoming a racecar driver, settled for the second-best gig: auto tinkerer and dash-cam video creator. The 23-year-old posts almost daily about his tuneups and driving expeditions. If he’s lucky, something bad will happen—a car nearly hitting him or veering into his lane—that he can package as comedy.
He’s a bit of a local celebrity in northern New Jersey, where tricked-out 2006 Honda Odysseys are a rare sight. “Very often you see people get out of their car at a red light, pop out their phone and start taking, like, a photo shoot,” Fleischmann says.
Dash cameras—once purely functional devices meant to capture accidents and help settle insurance disputes—are now content-creation machines. People like Fleischmann use them to film their daily drives and occasional near-misses. Sometimes they deliberately push limits to force the action.
“People kind of wait around for moments and things like that, but I’ll know how to go and actually make moments,” Brinson says.
Brinson’s most popular clip depicts an impromptu race between his BMW sedan—kitted out with a freshly upgraded turbo engine—and a Porsche that had passed him on the highway. Brinson emerges victorious. Buzzed on adrenaline, he challenges another driver in a Ford GT. “I went for the count…took off, and he never took off with me.”
What made the video viral wasn’t the intensity of the racing but Brinson’s fiery chatter, he says.
Team Analysis
BlackboxMyCar frequently partners with automotive and lifestyle creators on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, sending them products to review and promote to their followers. The company doesn’t shun drama. Sprinkled alongside product installation and demo videos on its own social media are crash and collision clips.
Choi says the focus remains on education. “Ultimately we’re not trying to glorify violence.” He adds, “We’re trying to get people to come to us because they want that peace of mind.”
Daniel Cusimano, a 25-year-old Tampa-based content creator, is fascinated—and a bit terrified—by the lengths people will go to capture the spectacle.
He recently bought his parents a dash cam to protect them from what he sees as manufactured recklessness.
“People are psycho and road rage is so real,” he says.
Write to Natalie Kaufman at natalie.kaufman@wsj.com
Match Outlook
One of Fleischmann’s best-performing videos captures him “framing” a BMW M4. He accelerates and spins his wheels to produce a grumbling noise before gently rolling past the luxury car. The sound draws the attention of a police officer who begins tailing the BMW while the “Trap Machine,” as Fleischmann calls his minivan, goes unnoticed.
“I think it comes down to it being a real captured moment,” Fleischmann says. “It’s something that you can’t really fabricate.”
John LoBrutto, 21, has become a minor dash-cam celebrity for his videos and posts poking fun at driving mishaps he encounters in the Hudson Valley town of Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
“I was like, you know, ‘I’ve kind of had enough with the Poughkeepsie drivers,’” he says. “And at some point last year I was just like, ‘You know I’m going to post these and see what happens.’”
Videos racked up millions of views and fans even bought LoBrutto’s branded merchandise, including screen-printed “I Survived the Taconic State Parkway” T-shirts, referring to the highway that runs roughly parallel to the Hudson River. He netted enough to pay off his old Volkswagen and put money toward his new ride, a 2021 Mercedes.
LoBrutto hasn’t pushed the Mercedes’ limits on camera, and he isn’t sure he has to. Poughkeepsie drivers keep his content vibrant without him needing to pull stunts, he says. “I try not to be the bad guy online.”
LaTaj Brinson documents both organic incidents and those he readily admits he manufactures. The West Palm Beach, Fla., influencer posts recordings that capture both the road and himself in the driver’s seat as he challenges other cars to races while chirping and cracking jokes.
The American Automobile Association says showboating for the camera is unsafe regardless of the method of filming. “It’s a misconception that filming with dash cams is safer than using a phone behind the wheel because of distraction,” says Mark Schieldrop, a spokesman for the AAA’s Northeast chapter. He adds that all that footage could become evidence in court.
“They think that what they’re doing is impressive or demonstrates their high-level ability when in reality all they’re doing is documenting a crime,” he says. “There’s nothing impressive about weaving in and out of traffic.”
Social media has provided a boost to the dash-cam business, says Joseph Choi, director of marketing and new business for auto-accessory retailer BlackboxMyCar. The short videos have turned what was once seen as a niche luxury into a must-have for younger drivers, he says.
