British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said on Monday glorifying dangerous driving on social media was “truly reprehensible”, as his government urged tech companies to remove videos following a car crash over the weekend that killed seven people.
A car driven the wrong way down a major road crashed into a police armed response vehicle in northeast England, killing all five occupants and two officers, in the early hours of Saturday morning. Four of the five occupants of the car that crashed had previous convictions, police said.
Police said on Monday they had arrested 12 people in a probe into organised criminal activity linked to the incident.
The crash followed two recent head-on collisions near Dublin, one of which killed five people, which prompted Ireland’s police chief to warn that some young people were driving the wrong way on the motorway “for social media likes”.
Police, however, said there was currently no evidence that the events leading up to the crash had been filmed to appear on short-form video platform TikTok.
Burnham said it was a “devastating incident” and as an investigation was ongoing, there was a limit on what he could say at this time.
“But of course, anybody who glorifies dangerous driving is doing something that is truly reprehensible and unacceptable,” he told reporters in Kyiv on Monday.
His spokesperson said the government had raised the issue of videos of dangerous driving with social media companies since the tragedy and made it clear that they should be removed.
Police said officers had received reports before the crash of two cars being driven dangerously, including a vehicle that was seen ramming properties in the Middlesbrough area in northeast England.
Both vehicles had been operating with cloned number plates to avoid detection, police said.
Police said inquiries over the weekend had resulted in the arrests of nine men and three women, aged between 19 and 61, across the Teesside area.
The suspects were arrested on suspicion of offences ranging from possession of a firearm to participating in the activities of an organised crime group, police said.
“This has been a fast-moving and complex investigation, with significant links to serious and organised criminal activity,” Assistant Chief Constable Wayne Fox said in a statement.
(Reporting by Sam Tabahriti）
