A driver has been hit with a wave of criticism after their 'death wish' driving forced the car behind them to make a Mario Kart-style manoeuvre to avoid disaster.

We all love a bit of Mario Kart, right?

There's nothing quite like the thrill of dodging banana skins and aiming for those colourful question mark mark boxes, but the excitement is very much tied to those roads being entirely virtual.

TikTok/@questmullakidda

You can't get hurt in real life if you accidentally run into one of those pesky turtle shells in the game, but a driver nearly found out exactly what would happen if such an obstacle was dropped into the real world.

In a video shared on TikTok, a dashcam filmed the moment a car travelling on a motorway suddenly swerved to avoid a huge white container lying in the middle of the lane.

The road looked mostly clear up ahead, and the huge box would have been hard to miss, but they were so late in moving lanes that the car behind them was forced to pull on to the grass verge at the side of the road to avoid the same obstacle.

The driver of the first car has been slammed for their last-minute move, with one person writing: "Car in front was DEFINITELY on his phone... (or up to some other mischief)"

TikTok/@questmullakidda

While someone else said: "Should never be going so quick, people have a death wish!!"

Another suggested the move might have been done on purpose, writing: "Stupid suv driver waiting till the literal last second to swerve out the way."

Both cars have received some flack for driving in the left hand lane - the 'overtaking' lane in the US - but the second car's ability to avoid crashing into the box has earned them some praise online.

"All those (wasted) years of playing Mario Cart [sic] finally paid off," one person joked.

Good Mario Kart player or not though, I'm sure the driver is just happy to be alive to tell the tale - or at least share the footage of it.