Prime Minister Andy Burnham has condemned the driving craze he called "truly reprehensible" after two police officers and five others were killed in a crash near Middlesbrough.
Pc Matthew Blades, 37, and Pc Tom Clough, 38, died when a Volkswagen Passat – which had been pursued by police – was driven the wrong way along a dual carriageway and hit their marked armed response vehicle. Cole Robert Worthy, 17, Theo Rae, 17, Makai Saddington, 18, and 23-year-olds Michael Robert Cahill and Jacob Matusiak were also pronounced dead at the scene in Teesside early on Saturday.
The incident came shortly after five teenagers died on the M9 in Co Kildare when their BMW crashed while driving the wrong way in a bid to get away from police. Three women and a seven-year-old boy in the other vehicle involved in the head-on collision were left badly injured in hospital.
Prime Minister's Warning to Social Media Firms
Mr Burnham spoke out during a visit to Ukraine on Monday, August 24, as the Government urged TikTok and other social media firms to remove wrong-way driving videos. After the incident, TikTok footage has emerged showing one of the men who died in the devastating crash filming himself driving dangerously in the months prior to the tragedy.
People who share footage glorifying dangerous driving are "doing something that’s truly reprehensible", the Prime Minister said. A Downing Street spokeswoman said: "The glorification of dangerous driving for clips and entertainment is utterly disgraceful and that is why we have raised the issue of this appalling content with social media companies since the tragedy, and the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Lisa Nandy) is clear that it should be removed in line with their legal obligations."
She added that Ofcom has the Government’s "full backing to take tough action" against platforms which fail in their legal duties. An Ofcom spokesperson said: "Under the Online Safety Act, platforms must minimise children’s exposure to violent material and content promoting dangerous challenges. In July, we launched an investigation into TikTok’s compliance with its child safety duties, and we’ve shown we’ll take action if evidence suggests companies are falling short."
Legal Duties Under the Online Safety Act
Unless a wrong-way driving video is classed as illegal content, there is no automatic duty on social media providers to take it down, according to the Online Safety Act, which requires tech firms to assess and mitigate the risk of people in the UK encountering illegal content on their platforms, and removing illegal content swiftly when they become aware of it. But the content itself must amount to a criminal offence in order to be considered illegal. Depictions of criminal activity are not generally covered by the Act and responsibility is understood to lie with platforms to decide whether content breaks UK law.
There are duties on providers to protect children against content deemed to be harmful, even if it is not classed as illegal. Dangerous stunts and challenges sit alongside bullying and abusive or hateful content in the "priority" category of harmful content. Regulations, published alongside the Act which passed into law in 2023, listed "content which encourages, promotes or provides instructions for a challenge or stunt highly likely to result in serious injury to the person who does it or to someone else".
Online platforms must minimise children’s exposure to such content, online safety regulator Ofcom said. However some providers, such as TikTok, said their own policies strictly prohibit content that could cause significant physical harm, including dangerous driving. It said it actively removes any videos and accounts that break its rules. The regulator is already looking into TikTok’s adherence to duties under the Act, with an investigation announced last month.
Ex-Officer Warns of Escalation
Ex-frontline responder Graham Wettone, who served in the Metropolitan Police for more than three decades, said that the issue of people wanting to be chased by police had "escalated" now that some were filming it for social media. Speaking to the Press Association, he said: "They are filming these pursuits now and posting them up for social media and we never had filming when I was doing police pursuits, but there was an element of, dare I say, mostly young men wanting to be chased by the police because they they got a bit of a kick out of it, a bit of a buzz.
“I think that’s now escalated into people seem to be doing it now to actually film the pursuit and then post the clip on their social media accounts to get likes and favourites etc etc, and get attention.” Mr Wettone said he believed this was an issue for "Government, police and social media platforms" to look at this type of content and remove it "as soon as it goes on there". He added: "There seems to be an increase in this type of thing taking place, as in driving very dangerously and recklessly, as in the wrong side of the road on motorways and dual carriageways. That’s putting other members of the public at significant risk, as we’ve seen in the last couple of weeks."
It comes as research has revealed that a motorist gets prosecuted every week for risking a head-on collision by driving the wrong way on the motorway. Reckless drivers are caught reversing along the carriageway, pulling U-turns next to high-speed traffic and driving backwards in a bid to reach a missed exit junction, court papers show. The Press Association has found that 31 drivers in the past 30 weeks were charged by police with criminal offences involving driving in the wrong direction on the motorways of England and Wales. Those convicted are typically ordered to pay out hundreds of pounds in fines and court fees while some face driving bans as a result of their actions.
