In today’s newsletter: A surge in deadly wrong‑way crashes has exposed our failure to protect young drivers, as grieving families and safety experts warn that age, inexperience and lax licensing rules are costing lives
Good morning. The UK government yesterday backed Ofcom to take “tough action” against social media companies that fail to remove posts celebrating dangerous driving, in response to a series of unsafe, and sometimes deadly, viral trends. Young men are filming themselves driving the wrong way down busy streets, accelerating to extreme speeds on narrow rural roads and putting a vehicle in “ghost mode” – switching off headlights and taillights at night – for clicks and kudos.
Andy Burnham labelled people who share such content as “truly reprehensible” after two police officers died in a head on collision in the early hours of Saturday morning near Middlesbrough. Their vehicle crashed into a car driving the wrong way down the A66. Five young men aged between 17 and 23 were inside, all of whom died too. The previous weekend, a family of four were seriously injured in a night-time collision with a car driving the wrong way along the M9 in County Kildare, Ireland. All five teenage boys in that car also died.
UK politics | Andy Burnham has backtracked on his proposal to rip up the government’s housing plans and boost social home building.
UK news | Rupert Lowe, the leader of Restore Britain, is on course to earn as much from the social media platform X as he does from his salary as an MP, after surging income from posts that include demands for mass deportations.
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