Simon Hallam wanted to join the worldwide craze by posting a photograph of himself lying face-down and rigid on the boot of a speeding car, his father told the Daily Telegraph.<\/p>\n
The driver of the car he fell from on Tuesday has been charged with dangerous driving and other offences.<\/p>\n
“The internet and Facebook, they’re just dreadful things … they encourage this sort of behaviour among the young ones,” father Terry Hallam told the paper.<\/p>\n
“You do these things to be noticed, to get attention,” he added. “Well, look at the attention Simon’s getting now from the doctors and the nurses and he doesn’t even know about it.”<\/p>\n
Last week Australia recorded its first death linked to young people posting photographs on the internet of themselves planking in unusual or dangerous places.<\/p>\n
“It’s what we’ve been fearing,” Queensland Police Deputy Commissioner Ross Barnett said after Brisbane 20-year-old Acton Beale fell seven storeys to his death from the balcony of an apartment building.<\/p>\n
Facebook group Planking Australia, which had 8,700 followers before Beale’s death, now has 150,000.<\/p>\n