- When a Tesla went airborne off of a steep Los Angeles hill, it wasn't the first stunt of its kind.
- For over 100 years, Baxter Street has been used to show off cars, from 1900s Dodge trucks to modern-day Teslas.
- The March Tesla stunt left parked cars and trash cans damaged, and authorities are looking for the driver.
When a Tesla flew over one of Los Angeles' steepest hills in a now-viral stunt, it wasn't the first time the infamous hill had been used to showboat cars.
At around midnight on March 20, someone driving a rented black 2018 Tesla S-BLM sped down the hill, flying 50 feet and crash-landing and skidding on its front bumper into two parked cars.
The history of Baxter street and car stunts dates back more than 100 years, while the steep street's history goes back even further.
The street's origins go back to the mid-to-late-1800s when the City of Los Angeles officially designated a tract in the Echo Park neighborhood as Baxter Street in 1872. Housing was built in the area, which was divided into a grid pattern, and by the 1890s, Baxter St. had been graded into the intense straight hill it is today — partially to act as a pedestrian path adjacent to the long-defunct streetcar line on Echo Park Avenue, according to Los Angeles Magazine.
Baxter St. was built on a 33% gradient, according to the Los Angeles Department of Transportation; today, Los Angeles grades hills at no steeper than 15%. Baxter is the third steepest road in Los Angeles and the tenth steepest in the nation, according to the Los Angeles Times.
According to LA Mag, by the early 1900s, car manufacturers like Dodge would use the hill to test the horsepower of their cars in different sorts of public stunts. In 1916, one truck stocked with 4,300 pounds of hay bales inched up the hill as reporters with cameras captured the event.
The viral flying Tesla stunt from March was not the first of its kind either, as Baxter St. has become somewhat of a proving ground for social media stunts.
In January 2020, YouTuber David Dobrik filmed a video of one of his friends driving his Tesla over the hill, catching significant air, with a less destructive but similarly dangerous effect.
—DAVID DOBRIK (@DavidDobrik) January 28, 2020
"These speed bumps in LA are on another level," Dobrik captioned the video on Twitter. Elon Musk, Tesla's founder and CEO, responded with a solitary exclamation point. The video has been viewed close to 10 million times on Twitter.
The sharp incline has also been the intersection of crashes and source of drivers' perils for years, as it was never originally meant to hold such heavy traffic.
By 2018 in part due to the advent of navigation apps, the city of Los Angeles was forced to make a series of traffic updates — including directional changes and the addition of multiple stop signs. The LADOT said that the street had become "a major safety concern for residents, emergency vehicle access, and those using the roadway."
Baxter Street 3 days after the stunt
Small units, Craftsman homes, and hilltop mansions line the old street. As Insider spoke to residents in the neighborhood, walkers struggled up and down the street due to the sheer gravitational pull of the gradient. On the section of the street where the car crash-landed, skidmarks from a shredded front bumper were visible; and trashcans, left out by residents for garbage pickup, were torn to shreds by the nosediving Tesla.
"It could have been cool," a local resident who walks up the steep hill for his daily walks and asked that we refer to him as his middle name, Cosmo, told Insider days after the March 20 Tesla stunt. "But somebody could have died, too."
Cosmo told Insider he was used to stunts on the street, sometimes with dirt bikes, but he recommended getting a permit to do stunts in a more controlled area or at least making sure cars weren't parked, noting the historic car culture and car clubs in Echo Park and Elysian Park.
Another resident on the top of Baxter St., where the car was airborne, spoke to Insider through their doorbell buzzer saying that he tried to sleep through the event, but was awoken by the Tesla crashing into another car down the street, "which sounded like fireworks."
—Chazzy (@chazzydawgg) March 20, 2022
Car influencer Alex Choi posted an eyewitness video of the incident the following day, titled "jumping a tesla." In it, he travels to a Tesla meet-up-and-drive in Los Angeles he had organized and vlogs the evening.
At one point on the drive, Choi says that "some random dude" told him that he was going to jump the street that Dobrik filmed: Baxter St. From there, Choi films the incident and is left stunned.
It's still unclear how many passengers were confirmed to be in the car or if anyone was injured.
The LAPD has put out a reward of $1,000 for information about the driver, adding in a statement that there was still no description of the driver and that the car was abandoned at the scene.
"We have received over 50 tips and anticipate more due the story going viral," the Los Angeles Police Department tweeted after the incident. "Over 90% of the tips are of the same person who has a TikTok handle of @dominykas or @durtedom on Twitter. He is considered a person of interest based on the public postings on his account."
Authorities added that the incident is being investigated as a misdemeanor hit and run and confirmed that the car was rented from Enterprise, who they are working with to determine the driver's identity.
Dominykas Zeglaitis, a controversial influencer known as Durte Dom who was formerly part of Dobrik's "vlog squad" claimed responsibility in multiple TikTok videos, including footage of the stunt in one video, which amassed 11 million views before it was taken down by the platform.
Several influencers called Zeglaitis' bluff, which led him to post a YouTube video claiming that he had nothing to do with the crash but had edited videos to make it seem like he did to generate controversy.
Ultimately, local resident and musician Jordan Hook experienced the brunt of the crash as his Subaru was one of two cars that were hit during the crash landing, leaving his car totaled. After a GoFundMe appeal though, Hook was able to raise over $20,000 to repair his car, as residents, for the time being, have been forced to think twice about parking their car on the steep street.