Police officers in Cheshire were left stunned after pulling over a car on the M6 to discover it was being driven by a 16-year-old boy, who had bought the vehicle with friends for just £250 hours earlier. The teenager led officers on a 50-mile pursuit through Cheshire and Staffordshire before being stopped at Stafford services, after checks revealed the car was untaxed, uninsured and had no MOT. The incident, captured on camera for Channel 5's "Motorway Cops", comes amid growing concern over dangerous and underage driving following a series of fatal crashes involving young people.

Four children in total were found in the red Kia, including the driver, who was arrested and later charged with driving without a licence and without insurance after admitting he was "sorry" and confirming his parents had no idea he was out driving. The footage shows PC Mark Gribble and PC Lucy Pond detaining the boy and radioing the discovery to control. The case emerged as calls mount for a crackdown on social media videos glorifying reckless driving, following two separate tragedies that killed 12 people within days of each other — a police pursuit crash in Teesside that killed two officers and three others, and a wrong-way M9 crash in Co Kildare, Ireland, that killed five teenagers.