Minister tells social media firms to remove posts that ‘celebrate’ dangerous driving after A66 crash
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Seven people, including two police officers, died after a car being pursued by police collided head-on with a marked armed response vehicle on the A66 near Middlesbrough in the early hours of Saturday. The tragedy prompted the government to demand social media platforms remove videos glorifying dangerous driving, amid concern such content may have influenced the crash, with ministers warning that Ofcom would use Online Safety Act powers to compel removal if firms failed to act voluntarily.
PC Matthew Blades and PC Tom Clough died when their vehicle was struck by a Volkswagen Passat driving the wrong way up the carriageway; the five occupants of the Passat, named as Cole Robert Worthy (17), Theo Rae (17), Makai Saddington (18), Michael Robert Cahill (23) and Jacob Matusiak (23), were also killed. The car, believed to have cloned plates, had been followed by police for seven minutes after intelligence linked a similar vehicle to "multiple incidents", though officers had abandoned the pursuit and remained on the correct side of the road before the fatal collision. Downing Street called the glorification of dangerous driving online "utterly disgraceful", defence minister Luke Pollard said his department had told platforms including TikTok to remove such content, and Ofcom confirmed TikTok was already under investigation over its handling of material encouraging dangerous stunts.
- Seven died in A66 crash, including two police officers, near Middlesbrough
- Five young people in fleeing car also killed after wrong-way collision
- Ministers demand platforms remove videos glorifying dangerous driving
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Middlesbrough is where the deadly A66 crash happened: a car being pursued by police went the wrong way up the road and hit an armed response vehicle, killing five young people in the car and two police officers. The government is now pressing social media platforms, particularly TikTok, to remove videos that appear to celebrate or glorify dangerous driving, arguing this kind of content can encourage risky behaviour.
The key figures are Luke Pollard, a defence minister speaking for the government, and TikTok, which has faced pressure over the material and denies its platform endangers children. The regulator Ofcom also has a role, since it oversees how platforms handle harmful content aimed at or reaching children, and it is separately looking into TikTok's age-checking measures.
This matters because it touches on a wider debate about how much responsibility social media firms bear for content that could inspire dangerous or fatal driving, and what powers the government has under the Online Safety Act to force platforms to act rather than relying on them to do so voluntarily.
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Supporters argue that this is a proportionate and urgent response to a preventable tragedy: seven people, including two police officers, are dead after a pursuit connected to a culture of dangerous driving that some online content actively glamorises. They contend that platforms already prohibit this material in their own terms of service, so ministers are simply asking for consistent enforcement rather than imposing new speech restrictions, and that the Online Safety Act exists precisely to give regulators leverage when self-policing has previously proved patchy. On this view, protecting children from being drawn into imitating fatal stunts is a legitimate and pressing public safety concern that outweighs any inconvenience to platforms.
The case against
Others are more cautious about ministers directing what may or may not appear online, even with good intentions. They point out that terms like 'celebrate' are inherently subjective, risking overzealous takedowns of news coverage, dashcam footage used for road-safety education, or ordinary car-enthusiast content that has nothing to do with this crash. They also question whether removing videos meaningfully changes offline behaviour, noting that dangerous driving is already comprehensively illegal, and worry that government pressure backed by regulatory threat sets a precedent for ministers shaping content moderation on emotive but loosely defined grounds, rather than leaving such judgements to due legal process or clearly codified rules.