Content creator Chloe Carter recently shared a video that went viral, showing a shocking number of air fresheners hanging from her Uber driver’s rearview mirror. What should have been a normal ride turned into a truly awful experience for her.
According to Motor1, Carter’s video quickly got more than 1.6 million views on TikTok. It showed her sitting in the backseat looking sick and upset, almost ready to jump out of the moving car. The text on the video said: “Imagine being carsick and ur Uber driver is a fragrance mixologist.”
She added a song by Charli xcx called House playing in the background, which includes the line “I think I’m gonna die in this house.” It fit her situation perfectly. When Carter turned the camera around, viewers could see why she felt so terrible. The driver had at least 16 tree-shaped air fresheners hanging from the rearview mirror. That’s a huge amount of fake scent packed into a small, closed space.
Too many air fresheners can actually trigger serious health problems
This isn’t just about not liking a strong smell. For many people, these heavy scents can cause real health issues. Strong smells in closed spaces are one of the main triggers for people who get migraines, along with cleaning products and car exhaust.
Research shows that people who suffer from migraines often have smaller olfactory bulbs, which is the part of the brain that handles smell. This makes them more sensitive to scents. Strong smells don’t just bother them; they can actually start or make a migraine worse. While this ride was bad, at least Carter didn’t experience a driver’s bathroom emergency mid-trip.
Air fresheners get mixed reactions from people in the migraine community. Instead of getting rid of bad smells, they just add more scent to cover them up, which can make symptoms much worse in a car. The comments on the video filled up with people sharing similar bad experiences.
One viewer said, “As a migraine person this is like final boss level.” Another complained, “The worst is when it’s the air freshener mixed with the smell of stale cigarette smoke 😭.” Someone else added, “being in my first trimester in an Uber is a nightmare I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy 😭.” Other riders have faced worse situations, like when a driver left with their luggage.
Some viewers defended the driver’s choice. One person said that if you drove for a living, “the fragrance is for the drivers to endure the many stinky passengers.” That’s a fair point, but there should be a middle ground between no scent and too much scent.
The company behind the tree design, Little Trees, says the idea started in 1952. A milk truck driver in northern New York complained to a chemist named Julius Sämann about the lasting smell of spilled milk in his truck. Sämann had spent years pulling scented oils from pine trees, so he mixed fragrances with special paper material to create the first car air freshener.
He shaped it like an evergreen tree to honor the time he spent in pine forests. Now, it’s clear this problem is common enough that something needs to be done. Hopefully, ride-share companies will notice how many people are affected by strong smells and give drivers some guidance before they turn their cars into mobile scent stores.
Published: Jan 30, 2026 07:19 am