These 3 videos are going viral in Brazil for the same reason

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — In one video, a tiny mob descends on a car parked illegally in a disabled spot and plasters it with thousands of Post-its, leaving behind the neat white outline of a wheelchair on a blanket of blue. They'd clearly had practice.

In another, a group of jiujitsu hardbodies pick up a running car stopped in a crosswalk and move it unceremoniously back to its correct spot on the road.

Then there's the one where this hulk of a man heaves a small car off a bike path, before cycling away to cheers:

There’s a notable trend in a recent slew of viral videos out of this country: Brazilians are fed up with lackadaisical traffic enforcement and arrogant drivers and are taking matters into their own hands.

Driving is dangerous here. The World Health Organization estimates 22.5 road deaths per 100,000 people in Brazil each year. That’s almost twice the United States' rate and considerably more than some of its neighbors.

But Brazilians aren’t just worried about deadly roads. As these videos show, they’re also upset about inconsiderate behavior: blocking pedestrians’ or bicyclists’ path, and illegal parking.

Paulo Sotero, director of the Brazil Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC, says these and other videos are an indication of a changing tide. Over the past two decades, Brazil’s growing middle class has begun to demand responsible government, and citizens.

“You have people feeling empowered to post those things, in order to enforce some basic standards of social behavior,” Sotero says. “What you’re seeing on social media is an expression, at the grassroots level, that ‘this is our country, this is where we need to raise our children, we need to change things locally.’”

Send an email to wcarless@globalpost.com if you’ve seen a video from Brazil recently that illustrates this trend.