Moment teenage driver crashes car after bragging about being high on laughing gas balloons
Published: 12:28, 9 October 2025 | Updated: 12:41, 9 October 2025
This is the moment a teenage driver crashed his car moments after he bragged about inhaling gas balloons.
Daniel Ross, 19, spent two and a half hours high on nitrous oxide - also known as laughing gas - and phoned a drug dealer for more a short while before his collision.
In horrifying dashcam footage, Ross can be heard inhaling the Class C drug as he sets off in his car.
Just five minutes later, he joins the A1 near Baldock in Hertfordshire and speeds along the road, zigzagging past other vehicles.
Ross then drifts off the road and collides with a bollard causing his car to flip on its side.
Miraculously, he walked away from the wreckage but his passenger was left with serious, life-threatening injuries.
Ross, from Letchworth Garden City, was charged with dangerous driving and drug-driving.
Daniel Ross, 19, spent two and a half hours high on nitrous oxide - also known as laughing gas - and phoned a drug dealer for more a short while before his collision
In horrifying dashcam footage, Daniel Ross can be heard inhaling laughing gas moments before his crash
As he speeds along the A1 near Baldock - in Hertfordshire - Ross drifts off the road and collides with a bollard causing his car to flip on its side
Miraculously, Ross walked away from the wreckage but his passenger was left with serious and life-threatening injuries following the collision
He was sentenced to 10 months' imprisonment, suspended for 18 months at Stevenage Magistrates' Court in Hertfordshire.
Ross has also been disqualified from driving for two years and until he passes an extended test.
PC James Horn, from the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Road Policing Unit, said: 'Driving after taking Nitrous Oxide is not only illegal, it's incredibly dangerous.
'While it may seem harmless or short-lived, nitrous oxide can severely impair your reaction times, coordination, and judgment, putting you and others at serious risk.
'The effects can linger longer than expected, leading to unpredictable and potentially fatal consequences on the road.
'It is just as serious an offence as driving under the influence of alcohol and other drugs.
'We urge anyone thinking of driving having taken nitrous oxide to think of the potentially disastrous consequences.'
This is the latest instance of drivers high on hippy crack causing major crashes with often disastrous consequences.
In April, Washe Manyatelo was jailed for five years after he struck and killed Annette Dixon, 70, after she got off a bus in Edinburgh.
Manyatelo was high on laughing gas at the time and later fell asleep in police custody.
The convicted drug trafficker admitted causing the death of his victim by driving dangerously on August 26 in 2023, when he appeared at court earlier this year.
In December last year, Thomas Johnson, 19, was jailed for nine years after he lost control of his BMW and crashed into a tree killing his three friends.
The force of the collision 'ripped the roof off' the car and all three victims - Daniel Hancock, 18, Ethan Goddard, 18, and 17-year-old Elliot Pullen - suffered 'unsurvivable injuries' and were pronounced dead at the scene, Oxford Crown Court heard at the time.