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UK's Burnham: 'Glorifying dangerous driving in social media is repugnant'

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham referred to the promotion of dangerous driving via social media as "truly repugnant" on Monday, while his government called for tech companies to remove videos after a weekend car crash that killed seven people.

In the early morning hours of Saturday, a car that was driven in the wrong direction down a major highway crashed into a police vehicle with armed officers in Northeast England. All five passengers and two officers were killed. Police said that four of the five people in the car had prior convictions.

The police said that they had arrested 12 people as part of an investigation into organized criminal activity related to the incident. The accident came after two recent head-on crashes near Dublin. One of them killed five people. This prompted Ireland's chief police officer to warn that some young people are driving wrong way on motorways "for social media".

The police said that there is no evidence to suggest the events that led up to the accident were filmed for the purpose of appearing on the short-form video platform TikTok. Burnham described the incident as "devastating" but said that he couldn't say more at this point because an investigation is ongoing.

He told Kyiv reporters on Monday that anyone who promotes dangerous driving does something truly reprehensible.

Since the accident, the government has raised the issue with social media companies of videos of dangerous driving and asked that they be removed.

The police said they had received reports of dangerous driving before the crash, including one vehicle seen ramming into a property in Middlesbrough in northeast England.

Police said that both vehicles were operating with cloned plates in order to avoid detection.

Nine men and three woman, aged between 19 and 60, were arrested by police in the Teesside region after inquiries conducted over the weekend.

Police said that the suspects were detained on suspicion of crimes ranging from possessing a firearm to engaging in 'activities of organised crime groups'.

In a press release, Assistant Chief Constable Wayne Fox stated that the investigation was fast-moving with significant connections to serious criminal activity.

(source: Reuters)