Baby gender reveal ceremonies have been taken to a new potentially dangerous level with cars doing burnouts on suburban streets and emitting pink or blue smoke.
Sydney Event Escorts yesterday posted a video to social media that showed a crowd of about 30 people gathered next to parked cars and homes to watch the spectacle, news.com.au reports.
A man and woman can be seen looking on as a driver in a car starts forcibly losing traction and doing burnouts on the street. Arms dangle from the car windows as its occupants film the incident. The numberplate was blacked out in the video. Blue smoke then pours out of the back and the couple standing on the street embraces, clearly elated to learn they are expecting a son. A closing message fills the screen: 'It's a boy', the text reads.
It was the latest of several videos of its kind posted by Sydney Events Escorts on the company's Facebook page.
A NSW Police spokesperson said burnouts are illegal under the Road Transport Act.
"Traffic Highway Patrol has confirmed they are investigating this (incident on video)," the spokesperson said.
There is no suggestion onlookers in the video are doing anything illegal.
A man who answered the phone number listed on Sydney Event Escorts' business page and identified himself as "Sam" said he had stumbled across the gender reveal shown in the video and his organisation had nothing to do with it.
"We just filmed it because they're neighbours ... I don't know them," he said.
The man said the company didn't offer gender reveal services and that he didn't know the names of anyone involved. A congratulatory message that accompanied the video on Sydney Event Escorts' page read: "When 2 become 3, congratulations Bass & Shareen...it's a boy @sydney.event.escorts".
The video also showed a man wearing a Sydney Events Escort T-shirt releasing blue balloons into the blue smoke. But "Sam" told news.com.au the man in the video wasn't a staff member.
"We were giving out T-shirts," he said.
"The man in the video was one of the people we gave a shirt away to."
Another video posted just a few days earlier on the company's business page showed another gender reveal featuring a car, burnouts and coloured smoke.
The phone call was terminated by Sydney Event Escorts when news.com.au asked if the company was doing anything illegal. The clips were quickly taken down from the business page immediately after.
-news.com.au