CEDAR CITY, Utah (ABC4) – Another trend is circulating on TikTok known as the “Lug Nut Challenge.” It’s encouraging people to loosen or steal lug nuts off vehicles just to see what happens when the owner drives away.
“As I was driving down the road, I went through a little bump and I heard a really loud pop and the steering wheel started shaking a little bit,” says Daniel Wolf of Cedar City.
Daniel believes that’s what happened to his pick-up truck.
“A girl passed me in another car, she stopped and rolled down her window and said, ‘Hey, your wheel looks like it’s about to come off. It’s shaking like crazy. I said, ‘Yeah, I kind of felt that but I wasn’t really sure,” he recalls.
“Your tire just doesn’t have this happen to it, says Daniel’s wife, Kristina Wolf. “Your lug nuts just don’t fall off. So we just put that in the back of our minds like, ‘this is weird, but okay.'”
Daniel says after taking a closer look, he found all but one lug nut on the front right passenger wheel had been removed or sheered off.
“I had my daughter in the car, I had a friend in my car, says Daniel. “If that would have come off, who knows what would have happened.”
Kristina says after talking to friends, she realized that it didn’t only happen to her husband, it also happened to her neighbor.
“They made it back home safely,” says Kristina. “They ended up taking it to the mechanic and the mechanic started looking around everywhere and that’s when the mechanic noticed all of the lug nuts except for one was loosened.”
She believes the situation could have been deadly if her husband drove on the interstate that day.
“This is so dangerous especially when you’re going over bumps, little ridges, anything where the roads aren’t completely flat,” says Kristina. “Anything could have knocked that one lug nut loose, and then you have tragedy on your hands.”
The Wolfs say they are asking parents to be aware of what their children are doing online, hoping to prevent a serious injury or even death from happening all due to a dangerous TikTok trend.