"PC's killed in wrong way on A66 ..." - Why is this a reality?
"PCs killed in A66 crash were heroes, say families"
Find the whole article at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gvgy3de37o
R.I.P. And thank you for your service
Two officers are dead because of a "trend." When does this stop?
Tom Clough. Matthew Blades. Two Cleveland Police officers, 38 and 37 years old, killed on the A66 near Middlesbrough because a car being pursued by police turned the wrong way down a dual carriageway and smashed into their vehicle head-on.
One was a former English teacher who'd swapped the classroom for policing. The other had just started coaching his local under-sevens football team. Both left families behind. One leaves two young sons who'll grow up being told, not shown, what their dad was like.
The other vehicles ocupants are dead as well
This wasn't an accident in any meaningful sense
Cleveland Police had been trying to track this car for a while — it was linked to a string of incidents and was believed to be running on cloned plates. Officers pursued it for almost seven minutes before it turned the wrong way onto the A66. They aborted the pursuit the moment that happened. Ten seconds later, it hit an unrelated police vehicle travelling correctly on its own side of the road.
So this wasn't officers recklessly chasing a car into oncoming traffic. It was a car deliberately driving the wrong way down a dual carriageway, in the dark, at speed.
The part that should make you angry
Video believed to show one of the young men in the car had been posted to TikTok months earlier , the footage of a police pursuit, joyriding at 100mph, a car being set on fire. It's since been deleted, but it existed, and it got views.
Driving the wrong way down roads to film it has apparently become enough of a "thing" online that the government has now told TikTok and other platforms to pull the content. A defence minister said the quiet part out loud: platforms have spent years arguing they can self-regulate, and this is the moment to prove it. Views generate money. Dangerous, stupid content generates views. Nobody in that chain is incentivised to stop it until people start dying.
This is a platform accountability problem
Video believed to show one of the young men in the car had been posted to TikTok months earlier — a police pursuit, joyriding at 100mph, a car being set on fire. It's since been deleted, but it existed, got views, and by all appearances fed straight into whatever mindset put that car on the wrong side of the A66 in the dark.
The government has now told TikTok and other platforms to remove content celebrating this "drive the wrong way and film it" trend. Fine. But asking nicely, after two officers are already dead, is not a policy it just seems to be a press release. These platforms have spent years insisting they can self-regulate. They've had every chance to prove it and haven't.
So stop asking. Set a hard legal duty: content showing wrong-way driving, high-speed pursuits, or vehicle arson gets removed within hours of being reported, not months. Attach real penalties for platforms that drag their feet like fines big enough to actually hurt, and for repeat, deliberate non-compliance, the country in question should be willing to pull the app entirely until it complies. Other countries have banned platforms over far less than "our citizens are dying because of your recommendation algorithm." There's no principled reason the UK couldn't do the same as a last resort.