Janna Teems fell and was severely injured while riding on the top of a moving car driven by her teenage friend, Matthew Bates. Teems and her parents subsequently brought this negligence action *71 against Bates for damages. The jury returned a verdict in favor of Bates. On appeal, Teems and her parents contend that the trial court erred in charging the jury on the assumption of the risk doctrine and on the duty imposed upon a guest passenger. They further contend that the trial court erred in allowing defense counsel to cross-examine Teems’s father about his own experience holding onto a moving car and to elicit his opinion as to whether he or the driver in that incident was more at fault. Finding no reversible error, we affirm.
Following a jury trial, we view the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict.
DuBois v. Ray,
Teems then rode around the parking lot while lying on the top of Mercurio’s moving car. Bates watched from his own car. After completing the. ride, Teems and Mercurio were exhilarated and were laughing as they approached Bates.
Teems suggested that she and Mercurio car surf on Bates’s car. Mercurio was nervous about car surfing on Batеs’s car, told Teems that she thought it was dangerous, and suggested that they not do it. Nevertheless, Mercurio ultimately agreed to car surf with Teems. They did not discuss how fast Bates would drive or the route he would take, although Bates did tell them that he would be careful while he drove around with them on top of his car.
Teems and Mercurio climbed on top of Bates’s car and held onto the open sunroof while lying on their stomaсhs upon the back windshield. Teems lay on the left side of the roof while Mercurio lay on the right. Bates began to drive around the parking lot at a speed of 10-15 miles per hour, the same speed at which Mercurio had driven previously. Teems, realizing her friend was scared, released her right hand from the sunroof and put it around Mercurio. Bates success *72 fully made one right-hand turn. As he made a second right-hand turn at a sharper angle, however, Mercurio yelled for him to stop, and Teems fell from the car onto the pavement. Teems was severely injured as a result of the fall and required weeks of hospitalization and rehabilitative therapy.
Bates was criminally charged and pled guilty to reckless driving and serious injury by vehicle. Teems and her parents (collectively, “Teems”) then brought this damages action against Bates, assеrting claims of negligence and negligence per se. The case was tried before a jury, which found in favor of Bates. This appeal followed.
1. Teems contends that the trial court erred in charging the jury on the assumption of the risk doctrine. At the conclusion of the evidence, the trial court gave the following charge:
When a person knowingly and voluntarily takes a risk of physical injury the danger of which is so оbvious that the act of taking such risk in and of itself amounts to a failure to exercise ordinary care for one’s own safety, that person cannot hold another liable for injuries proximately caused by such action even though the injuries may be in part attributable to the negligence of the other person.
Teems contends that the charge was not authorized because the evidence was insufficient to show that she assumed the risk of falling and injuring herself while car surfing on Bates’s car. 2 We disagree.
“A trial court has a duty to charge the jury on the law applicable to issues which are supported by the evidence,” and a party is entitled to a jury charge on a specific issue as long as there is slight evidence to support it. (Citation and punctuation omitted.)
Jones v. Sperau,
The affirmative defense of assumption of the risk bars recovery when it is established that a plaintiff, without coercion of circumstances, chooses a course of action with full knowledge of its danger and while exercising a free *73 choice as to whether to engage in the act or not. In Georgia, a defendant asserting an assumption of the risk defense must establish that the plaintiff (1) had actual knowledge of the danger; (2) understood and appreciated the risks associated with such danger; and (3) voluntarily exposed himself to those risks.
(Punctuation and footnotes omitted.)
Muldovan v. McEachern,
Evidence was presented at trial that Teems assumed the risks of car surfing as implied by her conduct. When a person voluntarily undertakes an obviously dangerous activity, that person can be said to have assumed the risks necessarily attendant to that activity. See
Roberts v. Carter,
Furthermore, there was testimony that Teems was specifically warned of the dangers of car surfing before she rode atop Bates’s car. It is true that Teems did not testify as to her knowledge of the dangers associated with car surfing because she could not remember anything about the incident as a result of her head injuries. But *74 Mercurio testified that when Teems suggested to her that they car surf on Bates’s car, she warned Teems that the activity was dangerous and that they should not do it. Mercurio’s testimony shows that despite being made aware of the danger involved and being advised against engaging in the activity, Teems voluntarily chose to expose herself to the danger by proceeding to car surf on Bates’s moving car.
Nevertheless, Teems argues that the assumption of the risk doctrine does not apply in this case because she was not specifically informed beforehand of the speed at which Bates would drive, thе exact route he would drive around the parking lot, or that he would make a sharp right-hand turn. She further argues that the doctrine does not apply because she did not consent to Bates driving around the parking lot in a negligent or reckless manner. 4 We are unpersuaded.
We have held that when a person goes on a thrill ride at an amusement park or fair, the person necessarily accepts the forces generated by changes in speed and direction as “normal hazards of the amusement device,” since those changes are “ordinary, necessary and inherent in the [ride] itself and [are] part of the thrill bargained for.”
Atlanta Funtown v. Crouch,
Car surfing is itself a type of thrill ride. A person who agrees to car surf necessarily accepts the forces generated by changes in the speed and direction of the moving vehicle as normal hazards of the activity that are necessary and inherent in the activity itself and are part of the sought after thrill. See
Atlanta Funtown,
We likewise reject Teems’s argument that the evidence had to
*75
show that she specifically consented to Bates driving in a negligent or reckless manner in order for her to have assumed the risk of falling and being injured. As an initial matter, we note that Teems contends that Bates was negligent and reckless because he “accelerated and made a sharp right-hand turn without warning.” Bates testified, however, that he made a slow acceleration while driving around the parking lot and that when Teems fell, he was driving at the same speed that Mercurio had driven. To thе extent there was conflicting testimony on this point, we defer to the jury’s resolution of the conflict in favor of Bates. See
Norton,
In any event, our law does not require that Teems must have consented to any individual acts of negligence committed by Bates, but rather that she consented to the known and obvious risks arising from her choosing to car surf, including the risk of falling from the car as the result of changes in speed and direction. See
Fowler v. Alpharetta Family Skate Center,
*76
Teems relies upon
Little Rapids Corp. v. McCamy,
Teems’s reliance upon
Vaughn v. Protective Ins. Co.,
Finally, Teems argues that she was misled into riding on the top of Bates’s car, and thus as a matter of law did not assume the risk of injury, because Bates assured her and Mercurio that he would drive carefully around the parking lot but then failed to do so. We do not agree. Such a general assurance did not remove the issue of assumption of risk from the jury, since the jury could conclude that the risk of falling associated with changes in speed and direction while car surfing was so obvious that Teems could not have been misled into believing that the risk had been eliminated. See, e.g.,
Young,
For these reasons, we conclude that there was at least slight evidence that Teems assumed the risk of falling and injuring herself while car surfing on Bates’s car. Thus, contrary to Teems’s contentions on appeal, the trial court did not err in charging the jury on the assumption of the risk doctrine. See
Jones,
2. Teems next argues that the trial court erred in giving the following charge to the jury on the duties of a guest passenger:
A person riding as a guest may assume that his host drivеr will not be negligent. However, if a danger arises and the circumstances are such that it would become apparent to a person of ordinary prudence in like circumstances, then it is the duty of the guest to do whatever, in the opinion of a jury, a person of ordinary prudence would or should do in the same or like circumstances.
According to Teems, the charge was not authorized by the evidence because she was not a guest passenger riding in Bates’s car and there was no time for her to alter the course of Bates’s driving before she fell. We discern no reversible error.
Pretermitting whether the guest passenger charge w-as appropriate in a case involving car surfing, we conclude that the giving of the charge was harmless under the circumstances. If anything, the giving of the charge
helped
Teems beсause it informed the jury that a passenger is entitled, at least initially, to assume that the driver will not be negligent, even though Teems had chosen to engage in the inherently dangerous activity of car surfing. “In order to have reversible error, there must be harm as well as error and the lack of harm makes this enumeration of error without merit.” (Citation and punctuation omitted.)
Moxley v. Moxley,
3. Lastly, Teems asserts that the trial court erred in requiring her father to testify on cross-examination about his own experience holding onto a moving car and to give his opinion as to whether he or the driver in that incident was more at fault. Again, we disagree.
Defense counsel questioned Teems’s father about an incident *78 that occurred when he was a teenager where he held onto a moving car while riding a bicycle. Teems did not object to this line of questioning until defense counsel asked her father whether he or the driver would hаve been more responsible if he had fallen off his bike. Over objection, Teems’s father responded:
I think it would be some of my responsibility that I shouldn’t have been holding onto the car. But the person driving the car should have easily said, no, I’m not doing this. You’re being stupid. Don’t do it. And would have turned the car off or stopped and not continued. . . .
Again over objection, defense counsel asked Teems’s father if he had fallеn during the biking incident, would it have been “more [his] fault, more the driver’s fault or equal fault.” The father responded, “I don’t think it’s even.”
Teems contends that this line of questioning should not have been permitted because it was irrelevant and unfairly prejudicial. We discern no reversible error. As an initial matter, Teems did not object to the questioning of her father about the bike incident until defense counsel attempted to elicit his oрinion about who was at fault. “A party who fails to raise a contemporaneous objection to the admissibility of evidence waives.the objection.” (Punctuation and footnote omitted.)
Wilson v. 72 Riverside
Investments,
In turn, we need not determine whether the trial cоurt erred in admitting the father’s opinion concerning who was at fault in the biking incident, since the admission of the testimony was harmless. See
Moxley,
PLAINTIFFS’ COUNSEL: And, of course, you have brought suit against Matt [Bates]. Why did you do thát?
MRS. TEEMS: Because I feel Janna [Teems] does have responsibility up to a certain point. However, Matthew holds the ultimate responsibility. Matthew put the keys in his car and turned the ignition on. He pushed the gas pedal *79 and made thе car go fast. And he also took that right-hand turn going faster than he should have which threw Janna off the car. And so Matthew does have, in my opinion, the ultimate responsibility, the control of that car.
In light of the mother’s opinion testimony, any error in the admission of the father’s opinion testimony was harmless, as it was cumulative of the testimonial evidence elicited by Teems’s own counsel. See
Bridges v. State,
Judgment affirmed.
Notes
The witnesses in this case provided conflicting accounts of the subject accident. In her brief, Teems relies upon the testimony most favorable to her version of events. But “the credibility of the witnesses where they contradict one another, or themselves!,] is always a jury question.” (Citation and punctuation omitted.)
Capp v. Carlito’s Mexican Bar & Grill #1,
Teems also contends that the trial court’s charge was an incomplete and misleading statement of the law, but she waived this contention by raising it for the first time in her supplemental appellate brief submitted aftеr oral argument. See
McReynolds v. Prudential Ins. Co. of America,
In
DeWinne v. Waldrep,
While Teems also argues that she did not assume the risk because Bates coerced her into riding on the top of his car, Bates denied having coerced or persuaded Teems or Mercurio into car surfing. He also testified that it was Teems’s idea to car surf. In her deposition testimony admitted as a prior inconsistent statement, Mercurio likewise testified that car surfing was Teems’s idea.
In contrast, a police officer racing down a public road in an emergency manner does not assume the risk of other drivers failing to act with due care. See
Vaughn v. Pleasent,
In other cases, we have held that the assurances given by the defendant created a genuine issue of material fact over whether the plaintiff assumed the risk of injury. See
Taylor v. Howren,