It’s time joyriding TikTok idiots are treated same as groomers & paedos – if social media giants won’t act, cops MUST

WE have heard endlessly about the dangers of sexual exploitation faced by children on the internet. The previous government even passed a law, the Online Safety Act, placing responsibility on the heads of tech companies, with punitive fines for those who fail to tackle the threat posed by predatory paedophiles grooming their victims, often by pretending to be children themselves. Flowers were laid outside of Cleveland Police HQ in tribute to the two dead officers Credit: PA The scene on the M9 northbound at Junction 3 in Co Kildare Credit: PA The laws extend to videos and apps which encourage children to harm themselves. Woe betide any tech firm which fails to take down dangerous content quickly. Sign up for The Sun newsletter Thank you! But something seems to have slipped through the net: social media videos showing joyriders and motorcyclists showing off by wilfully breaking the speed limit on public roads. The failure to tackle this material is causing the sort of carnage seen near Middlesbrough on Saturday morning when a car driving the wrong way down the A66 dual carriageway collided with a police car travelling in the opposite direction. Two of the young men in the fatal collision on Saturday morning had posted clips of them joyriding motors Credit: TikTok/@unknownm829 The horror crash on Saturday morning claimed the lives of five young men and two police officers Credit: PA Five youths in the car, as well as two officers in the police car, Matthew Blades and Tom Clough, were killed. It came just a few days after a similar incident in the Republic of Ireland, which also killed five youths in a car driven far above the speed limit. It doesn’t take too much imagination to see how irresponsible behaviour can spread among easily-led young people who are out to impress others. For some people, modern life seems to revolve around the search for followers and ‘likes’. In this case it is a pursuit which far too often leads to their death. Most read in The Sun But why is this sort of material still so easy to post on social media and so easy for others to view? Paedophiles in search of sexualised images of children are forced to delve into the dark corners of the internet, but I typed ‘speed’ and ‘driving’ into the search bar on TikTok and was immediately presented with dozens of videos showing illegal behaviour on the roads. ‘Nolimitspecs’ wants us to see how he weaves between lorries on a stretch of motorway, which appears to be in Britain. Some might find it exhilarating, but he is just inches from death as he straddles the lanes. ‘Mercy’ shows himself driving fast at night, with the words “Being young driving fast cars is a feeling I never wanna get rid of.” ‘FastChase’ is riding a motorbike, weaving through impossibly narrow spaces through a series of tunnels. It isn’t just men. ‘Zoe first time Mum’ has filmed herself rattling down a narrow country lane, bound between high hedges, at irresponsible speed, and captioned it “it this what it feels like when your [sic] about to die”. Tributes have been paid to PC Matthew Blades, 37, and PC Tom Clough, 38 Credit: PA A shocking clip appearing to show the last moments of the young men who died in a crash on the M9 in Co Kildare was shared to social media Credit: Social Media Collect It isn’t hard to work out what would happen if she finds herself faced with another vehicle – or another mother pushing a pram. I went onto YouTube and found much the same: videos showing irresponsible driving. Many have been filmed, or claim to have been filmed, on German autobahn, stretches of which have no speed limit. They are, therefore, not necessarily breaking the law simply by speeding, except that they then show cars weaving between lanes in a way which must surely be illegal, even in Germany. Some, though, quite clearly are in Britain. In one video, a driver films his speedometer as he reaches 201 mph in an Audi on the motorway. It is hardly as if YouTube has had chance to take it down: it says it was posted 6 years ago and has clocked up 896,000 views. If social media companies won’t act, surely the police should be doing so. The identity of the driver must be easy enough to trace, as can the location of the crime. If you get caught driving 200 mph on a public road you will most likely go to jail, so why has the relevant police force not acted on this self-incriminating video? The Online Safety Act was preoccupied with the image of teenagers sitting alone in their bedrooms and being manipulated by evil influences. This is, of course, a genuine problem. We have had children hanging themselves, deliberately or accidentally, or drawn to take illegal substances. But the harm wrought by furious driving videos is even more dreadful. Teenagers alone in their bedrooms tend to hurt only themselves. Drive a car dangerously on the roads and you can kill several innocent people. It is time the government acted and put an end to this sort of material for good, by adding it to the list of prohibited material in the Online Safety Act. Social media companies which allow it to be posted should face the consequences. They can hardly moan that it is impossible to detect videos of dangerous driving – and to pick it up before it is even posted. Before you publish a video on YouTube it gets scanned for copyrighted content. Social media giants seem to be able to identify and remove images of child abuse, which thankfully disappeared from visible parts of the internet. We have lost far too many young people, and innocent victims who happen to be in the wrong place. The deaths of Matthew Blades and Tom Clough should mark a watershed when finally the law catches up with people glorifying and encouraging recklessness on the roads. Comment now