A young driver is filming himself steering a moving car with his seatbelt looped over the wheel, pulling it like reins, never once touching the wheel itself. The video has spread fast on social media. Among those who shared it is Nikolay Popov, father of Siyana, a girl killed in a car crash, who wrote under it just one word: "Madness!"

The passenger next to the driver films the scene on a phone instead of stopping him. Loud music plays in the background, as if the clip was made for social media from the start.

Bulgaria's traffic law says drivers must keep watching the road at all times while driving. Before any fine can follow, police must first identify the driver and work out where and how the clip was filmed. The interior ministry has not yet said whether it will look into the case or whether it has received a report about the video.

Popov has for months been one of the loudest voices in Bulgaria calling for tougher checks on drivers and tougher action on the kind of reckless driving that leads to deadly crashes.

On October 4 alone, Bulgaria saw 28 serious road crashes, killing 4 people and injuring 30, interior ministry data show. Since the start of 2026, 378 people have died on Bulgaria's roads, 45 more than in the same period last year.

Clips like this have surfaced on and off since 2021, when a 10-year-old boy from the town of Peshtera known as Foncho became an online sensation after relatives filmed him driving and cheered him on. In recent months, videos have circulated showing children behind the wheel, passengers without seatbelts, and drivers filming themselves on their phones while driving. In some cases the footage itself has led to police checks and fines.

Posts like these tend to go viral fast and risk getting copied by others.