Long August is usually one of the busiest times of the year for police forces, with schools on summer break and many young people with a lot of time on their hands.
From the so-called “Teen Takeover,” which triggered a nationwide curfew, to the “Blackout Challenge,” where users strangle themselves, viral and sometimes dangerous challenges driven by social media have become an attraction for some young people.
But this summer, a dangerous new trend emerged across the UK and Ireland. It involves a group of mostly young men filming what are called “wrong-way” driving videos and posting them online.
The British government on Monday called on social media companies to remove videos glorifying dangerous driving after a spate of fatal crashes involving people driving the wrong way on major roads in the UK and Ireland.
As a result, reports of videos of dangerous driving circulating online have put tech companies in the spotlight, with local authorities warning that social media likes are being prioritized over the safety of innocent people.
Authorities are investigating the exact cause of the recent crash.
Two police officers and five young people were killed over the weekend when a vehicle traveling on the wrong side of the road collided with a marked police car near Middlesbrough in northern England.
Police said the five people in the car, a Volkswagen Passat, were between the ages of 17 and 23. According to the BBC, a now-deleted TikTok account believed to belong to one of the teens who died in the crash included a video posted in March 2025 of him and four other young people involved in what appears to be a police car chase.
Another video shared by the same profile appears to show a speedometer reading 100 miles per hour (160 kilometers per hour), the BBC said.
The bravery of Matthew Blaise, 37, and Tom Clough, 38, who were killed, was quickly praised.
Police announced late Monday that they had arrested 12 people as part of an investigation into criminal activity that occurred before the crash. Police said they had received multiple reports of two vehicles driving in a dangerous manner, including one “ramping into a building.”
On Monday, British Defense Minister Luke Pollard called on social media companies to remove content that shows dangerous driving, such as cars driving on the “wrong side of the road.”
Mr Pollard told the BBC: “There’s a lot of content on social media platforms online from people glorifying dangerous driving, glorifying bad driving on the road, driving the wrong way, incredibly bad behavior.”
“As a government, we have already spoken to these companies and told them that we will use the powers of the Online Safety Act to ensure that dangerous content is removed,” Pollard said, referring to a UK law that requires tech companies to protect users from illegal and harmful content.
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham later said people who shared footage glorifying dangerous driving were “doing something truly reprehensible”.
In response to the crash, social media giant TikTok said it was closely monitoring online content related to the incident and was removing videos and accounts that violated its rules.
Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, said on its website that content promoting “high-risk viral challenges” will be removed and images depicting reckless driving that could result in life-threatening injury or death will be restricted to people under 18 “unless shared in a fictional or professional setting.”
“Irresponsible and dangerous”
The incident near Middlesbrough is not isolated and local officials are discussing the dangers of the social media trend in the context of several other fatal crashes.
In early August, five teenagers were killed in a two-car crash in Ireland when they drove the wrong way on a highway. Three women and a boy in the second vehicle were hospitalized with serious injuries.
Garda Chief Superintendent Justin Kelly, head of Ireland’s police force, said the incident showed “how irresponsible and dangerous driving on the wrong side of the motorway can be” and said his thoughts were with those injured.
“What makes this reckless act even more horrifying is that it is done for social media likes in some cases, despite the potentially devastating effects on innocent people and themselves,” Kelly said at the time.
Irish police have also called witnesses in connection with an incident earlier this month in which a car carrying eight boys was traveling northbound on the southbound carriageway of a motorway near Dublin when it collided head-on with another car, causing serious injuries.
The true extent of the social media trend is still unclear, but Irish broadcaster RTÉ said on Monday, citing Ireland’s road and public transport network, that 62 wrong-way motorway accidents have been recorded in Ireland so far this year, 32% more than in the same period last year.
Reckless driving is not a new behavior, but now “it can be recorded and broadcast to millions of people for views, likes and followers. So the danger becomes the content,” said Mary Aiken, a professor of cyberpsychology at Capital Technology University in Washington, D.C.
Aiken told CNN that he believes documenting dangerous driving gives drivers “a sense of distance from real-world dangers.” “I think what they’re doing starts to feel like a game or a live performance, and the likes, views, and follower counts provide tangible, immediate social rewards,” she said.
He said it should be “very easy” for social media companies to remove content that glorifies this “criminal and high-risk behavior”.
TikTok said it uses a variety of techniques, including human moderation, detection technology, and user reporting, to remove content that glorifies violence or promotes crime.
The company announced that between January and March of this year, 99.1% of the content it removed for violating its violence and criminal behavior policies was removed before it was reported.
“My beloved son and brother”
Matt Storey, the police chief in Cleveland, where the Middlesbrough crash occurred, said it was too early to comment on the cause of the crash, but said filming while driving was “absolutely ridiculous” and “ridiculous”.
He told BBC Radio 4: “It’s a very dangerous situation and it would be a worrying situation if this became more widespread.”
Ms Pollard added that she wanted to know the outcome of the police investigation before “understanding exactly what happened in this tragedy here”.
In a tribute to the slain police officer, Mr Clough’s family said he was a “hero” who was “willing to help anyone for any reason”, while Blaise’s wife described him as “a beloved son and brother, the perfect son-in-law and the most fun uncle”.
