COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — Columbus residents are increasingly captivated by what they perceive as a peculiar trend — cars crashing into buildings.

The phenomenon has sparked the creation of social media accounts, such as the Instagram page “Columbus Carikaze,” dedicated to documenting these happenings. Paul Meara said he started the account after one particular crash in the Short North caught his attention.

“I would joke with my roommate [Phil Cook] who also helps run the account, ‘Should I start the Instagram account?’” Meara wrote in a message to NBC4. “Then with the Char Bar incident in September, I finally did — and here we are.”

Meara believes that the public fascination with these collisions stems from the unknown details behind each occurrence, citing an “unsolved mystery” quality to reports.

“Most of the time we never know or … find out what actually causes the accidents,” Meara noted. “Most of the ones we do know — it’s either a car malfunction (stuck accelerator, brakes go out, etc.) or a medical emergency happened while a person is driving. … So we just kind of marvel over why.”

The dedicated crash tracker said the reaction to his account, which asks, “Why does this keep happening?” in its profile, has been overwhelmingly supportive, with users contributing tips and eyewitness accounts.

“I do notice that people want to help us,” wrote Meara. “We often get DMs from people who witnessed or know someone who witnessed a crash, so it helps us a lot with building our posts and doing some of the initial research needed to report on these.”

Despite the sometimes dark humor in the comment section, the account does not ignore that the crashes have real consequences for businesses, many of which face prolonged closures and costly repairs.

The first documented episode of 2025 took place on Jan. 2 at Vow Studio + Salon on West 5th Avenue near Grandview Heights.

“New year, new crash,” the post reads. “Vow Studio Salon in Grandview is the latest victim of a building-related vehicle crash in the Columbus area after a car drove up a hill, small flight of stairs, and plowed into the front of the business.”

Salon owner Sam Antics told NBC4 that the business has been closed since the accident and workers are left without “tools of trade” due to the building being “deemed unsafe to enter.”

“We’ve been at the mercy of weather, insurance and contractors in hopes to reopen soon,” Antics wrote.

Previously, NBC4 asked Battalion Chief of the Columbus Division of Fire Jeffrey Geitter about the number of cars crashing into buildings around the city. Geitter said that from January 2024 to June 1, the Columbus Division of Fire was dispatched to 102 incidents involving a vehicle colliding with a building or structure. In an update, he noted the agency ended the year “with 139 total incidents involving a vehicle into a structure.”

Geitter also provided a heat map of those locations.

“As you can see from your previous article’s information, we are down in those incidents compared to previous years,” Geitter said, pointing to earlier statistics of 313 vehicle crashes into buildings or structures in 2022 and 279 in 2023.

Overall, Meara said that he hopes his attention to the accidents leads to some type of action or prevention measures.

“In my opinion, the only way to lessen these accidents is simply getting vehicles off the road by providing legitimate and effective alternative modes of transportation,” said Meara. “Columbus is a mid-major city in a country addicted to driving cars, so it really isn’t an anomaly that this is happening.”

In a Reddit thread on the issue, one user commented that Columbus is not the only city tracking structure collisions.

“In Pittsburgh we have r/yinzhittinbilldens,” the writer offered.