It was a wild ride Josh Hernandez will never forget. He jumped into his friend's trunk and went for a quick spin.
"The driver made a sharp left," the 18-year-old Evergreen Valley High School graduate said, "and my body hit the wall."
"Trunking," or riding in the trunk of a moving car, was once an underground activity borne out of necessity -- too many kids and not enough room for passengers. But now it's become a growing phenomenon partly driven by a recent law that bans teen motorists from transporting minors in their cars.
Trunking has caught the attention of law enforcement agencies and legislators after two 15-year-old boys from Glendora were killed last year in an accident while riding in trunk of a car driven by an unlicensed 17-year-old driver. An Assembly bill to outlaw trunking and increase punishment is pending in Sacramento.
Many of the teens interviewed by Mosaic said they understood trunking is against the law, and its inherent dangers, but that they weren't dissuaded.
Talia Gragert, a 16-year-old Evergreen Valley student, has been in cars with friends who have ridden in trunks.
She understands that trunking is not "the safest thing in the world," but believes that it is "more convenient and a way of saving gas."
She feels that teens often struggle to find methods of transportation and simply have to go with what they have.
The back-seat passengers, Talia said, "kept folding down the seats to make sure'' the people in the trunk "were OK."
Emily Sanseki, 17, a Cupertino High School senior, hopped into a trunk of her friend's crowded car to go to a party about half an hour away. Another friend accompanied Emily in the trunk, too.
The ride, she said, wasn't so bad. She had someone to talk to and share the experience with. "It's just like sitting inside" the car, "except you're lying down," she said.
She wasn't worried at the time.
"They make trunks with emergency latches so I wasn't afraid of getting stuck, and I've never been in an accident,'' Emily said, "so that possibility hadn't occurred to me at all. We all got where we wanted to go, that's all that really mattered at the time."
Not every teen enjoys trunking.
Sixteen-year-old Adina Avram, a Branham High School senior, went trunking after she and her five accompanying choir members piled into a Honda Accord. Somebody had to go into the trunk and, because Adina was the smallest, the others told her to ride in the trunk. She reluctantly got into the trunk and they closed the lid. Because the trunk was dark, small and hot, she felt claustrophobic and a wave of anxiety hit her when she realized that she had no idea what was happening outside, she said.
She also didn't realize that the car's trunk was designed to absorb the impact of a rear-end collision to protect passengers in the cabin.
"I didn't know that the trunk could crumble," Adina said.
Carolyn Grover, 17, a Cupertino High senior, recalled driving seven friends to a birthday party two weeks after obtaining her provisional driver's license. Two of her pals rode in the trunk of her Honda Civic.
Her licensed barred her from driving any person under 18 without a licensed driver 21 or older also in the car.
"I was terrified of being pulled over by the cops because I wasn't supposed to be even driving my friends in my car, much less my trunk,'' she said, chuckling.
But since then, she has driven with teens in the trunk more than a dozen times and said she does so because she likes to "live on the edge."
It's this type of attitude that is bound to get teens into trouble or, worse, hurt or killed, authorities say.
According to the California Highway Patrol, riding in a part of a car not designated for passenger use has caused 153 collisions, resulting in 250 injuries and nine deaths since the year 2000.
From 1982 to 2003, 96 people were killed in trunking-related accidents, according to statistics compiled by the U.S. Department of Transportation.
The deaths last year of the two Glendora high school students, Chris Snyder and Scott Atchinson, underscored the dangers of trunking.
The boys hitched a ride with a teenage driver of a passenger-packed Mazda Protege to go home. The driver attempted to change lanes, hitting a tree-lined divider on Route 66. The boys were ejected from the trunk and onto the highway, where they were run over.
The accident is the catalyst for a proposed tougher law to stop trunking.
A bill introduced by Assemblyman Dennis Mountjoy, R-Monrovia, and supported by the families of the Glendora boys, would increase penalties and fines for both the driver and the passenger in the trunk. The total fine can reach up to $400 and violators will receive a traffic violation "point" on their records.
Under existing law, the fine does not exceed $100 and there are no points levied against the driver's record. And the person in the trunk faces no punishment.
The bill could be approved in August, said Dave Snyder, Chris' father and also the head of a foundation geared to educate 15- to 24-year-olds about the dangers of reckless driving, including trunking.
"Trunking is more of a problem than the public knows,'' Snyder said. "Parents need to talk to their children and make them realize that driving is not a right but a privilege and when they drive, they are responsible for themselves, their passengers and everyone else on the road."
Snyder's biggest challenge is to force youths to remember the potentially fatal consequences of trunking before they pop the trunk lid. Sometimes they seem only to remember after they climb out of the trunk.
"It was really fun," Hernandez said about his trip in the trunk. "We didn't know what could really happen because you don't really think of it when you're in the trunk."