'Car Surfing', a new craze fuelled by pictures of stunts on the internet, has claimed its first British victim.

An 18-year-old man from Chesterton, near Harbury, Warwickshire, died in hospital after toppling from the roof of a Fiat Punto on Tuesday night. His name has not yet been released. The car’s 18-year-old female driver was arrested.

The victim is the first Briton to have died from a trend that originated in America and has spread in the past year with the growth of websites such as YouTube, on which car surfers post footage of their antics.

At least two other people have suffered head injuries in the past few weeks in British car-surfing incidents, in which teenagers stand on or cling to the roofs of moving cars. Many incidents have been reported in southwest England, with beaches a favourite location. Other incidents have been recorded in Suffolk and on the Isle of Mull.

One youth from Exmouth in Devon – named locally as 17-year old Greg Barton – is still in a critical condition in hospital after falling off a moving car. Chief Inspector Ian Aspinall, head of road traffic at Devon and Cornwall police, said car surfing was part of the “boy-racer culture”.

“This is the first time we’ve had a serious injury caused by car surfing,” he said.

The craze has its origin in the “hyphy” culture of the west coast of America, whose proponents listen to gritty urban music with pounding rhythms, and pride themselves on adrenaline-boosting stunts. It follows the equally dangerous craze for train surfing.

British car surfers, like their US counterparts, say it gives them a huge adrenaline rush. But the phenomenon claimed three lives in America last year.

The craze, inspired partly by the 1985 film Teen Wolf, starring Michael J Fox, has spread quickly in the past year as internet viewers copy what they see on sites such as YouTube and Google Video.

A number of British videos have been posted on YouTube.

In one, a man is seen driving along the beach at Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, on his own. He uses an object to jam the accelerator down, then climbs out of the door and onto the roof where he “surfs” across the beach. He was filmed from a distance, presumably by a friend.

A YouTube spokeswoman said the site told users clearly that videos showing dangerous or illegal acts were banned and that it would review any that users brought to its attention. Other incidents of car surfing have included one video filmed on Mull in the Inner Hebrides. A man is seen lying flat on the roof of a car as it speeds along a country road while his friends cheer.

One American car surfing video posted on YouTube in February shows a man lying against the bonnet of the car holding a beer bottle and a cigarette in one hand while grabbing the side of the car with the other hand.

Darren Moore, 24, a telesales consultant from Blackwood near Caerphilly, south Wales, is one of the few people in Britain to have been prosecuted for car surfing. He was caught on CCTV lying on his friend’s Vauxhall Cavalier as it raced through Blackwood high street at 30-40mph.

He was picked up by police an hour after the incident. Moore, who was banned from driving for a year, made to retake his test and fined £150, said: “It’s a great feeling when you do it, it’s a great buzz. I did it for about 10 minutes, and there were people on the street cheering.”

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