London: It is fast and furious – and sometimes fatal. After a horror crash left five teenagers dead, Irish authorities are desperate to stop an online trend that encourages young men to drive at reckless speeds.
And they are naming TikTok as a big part of the problem.
The teenagers died a few hours before dawn last Sunday when one of them drove a BMW at high speed on the wrong side of the M9 motorway south of Dublin, according to police.
Heading in the opposite direction were sisters Ella Hendricken and Alma and Niamh Kinsella and a seven-year-old boy, on their way to Dublin Airport to catch an early flight for a wedding in England. All four are in hospital, two with critical injuries. The crash has led to an outpouring of support for the family, with almost €300,000 ($490,000) raised to fund what friends say will be a “long and challenging” recovery.
Now the Irish community wants action to stop TikTok and other companies providing a platform for teenage groups to celebrate dangerous driving.
Online videos reveal dangerous stunts on Irish motorways as teenagers get behind the wheel of fast, often stolen, cars and post on TikTok while driving. In one video taken by a passenger, a car weaves in and out of traffic on a highway while the speedometer reaches 190km/h.
Some of the videos are attributed to a group known as the “Lucky Dip” gang because its members try their luck in stealing a car and seeing how many likes they can get online. It is not known whether the teenagers involved in last Sunday’s crash were members of the Lucky Dip gang.
The head of the Irish police force, Justin Kelly, named online platforms as part of the problem after confirming the teenage boys were driving south on the northbound side of the motorway last weekend.
“What makes this reckless behaviour even more appalling is that in some cases, it is being done for social media likes,” he said, while adding that the latest crash was still being investigated.
There was no police pursuit under way. The police, known as the Garda, had tried to stop the BMW earlier, but chose not to give chase.
Another crash earlier this month involved eight teenage boys in a car that hit another vehicle on the M50 motorway and caused serious injuries to an innocent party.
Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin, known as the Taoiseach, declared there would be “no tolerance” for the reckless behaviour. The national media regulator asked TikTok for a “full account” of how it hosted content that glorified criminal activity.
But when the chair of a parliamentary committee asked TikTok to appear at a public hearing, the company turned him down.
Media committee chair Alan Kelly, a Labour MP who represents Tipperary, said he wanted to know how quickly TikTok could identify and remove troublesome videos – and how it could prevent them appearing in the first place.
The result is a stand-off with one of the world’s most powerful online platforms.
TikTok’s head of public policy, Susan Moss, said it was “not appropriate” for the company to be singled out in the video-sharing industry when the committee had not called other companies.
Moss also named the police and media regulator inquiries as reasons not to appear before legislators. She is a former public policy official at Fine Gael, one of the parties in Ireland’s governing coalition.
Australia confronts this problem, also. Victorian Road Policing Assistant Commissioner Glenn Weir warned in November 2023 that people were sharing their dangerous driving on social media.
‘What makes this reckless behaviour even more appalling is that in some cases it is being done for social media likes.’
Justin Kelly, police chief
“I mean, seriously, the sense of entitlement and the stupidity never ceases to amaze me,” he said.
In some cases, police can track down the offenders and charge them.
When a crash killed a young boy near Wollongong in NSW in October 2022, TikTok agreed to shut down a hashtag – #creepingwhileyasleeping – that was used to share dangerous driving videos.
But the crash last weekend raises urgent questions for Irish political leaders – and those elsewhere – about whether TikTok has the capacity and will to remove dangerous videos.
That makes it another test in the broader tensions between governments and social media platforms over age restrictions, violent content and social responsibility.
Kelly, the MP who heads the media committee, said TikTok’s response to his request was a “slap in the face” to the Irish public.
“The issue of a Garda investigation being ongoing as an excuse for not coming is a red herring, while if they want us to invite in other social media companies with them, I’ve no problem with that,” Kelly told national broadcaster RTE.
“This matter is far too important for them to treat the Irish public this way.
“Ultimately, the platform that was used was their platform. It was TikTok. And the public that I’m talking to want to have assurances, not alone that they’ll be reactionary and take down such content, but that also they’ll proactively make sure that it doesn’t go up.
“Because they have the IT tools, they have AI tools to prevent this from happening, and they need to show that they’re going to do that.”
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David Crowe is Europe correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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