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Social media trend feeds on footage shot from cars racing down busy roads, with potentially lethal consequences
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Media — Robert Booth UK technology editor
The hashtags tell the story of the potentially lethal social media subculture where young men film themselves hurtling at illegal speeds down busy roads: #speedhunters, #needforspeed, #racing.
The fast-driving internet trend on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube is fed by footage shot from a driver’s perspective of cars going “#fullsend” – the jargon for roaring down dual carriageways – and “#gapping” or “#swimming”, as in weaving dangerously through packed traffic. The posts attract thousands, sometimes millions of views and have been described by Andy Burnham on Monday as “truly reprehensible” .
The prime minister spoke out after seven deaths on Saturday, including two police officers and five young men aged 17 to 23, when the young men drove the wrong way down the A66 in Teesside after a police chase. It has been reported one of the young men killed in the car previously posted fast-driving clips. Cleveland police said there was currently “no evidence that filming of the activities on Friday night and Saturday morning was for the purposes of TikTok”.
Related: ‘They’re thinking about the likes’: deadly TikTok motorway trend horrifies Ireland
Last week a similar incident shocked Ireland when five teenagers – some of whom had previously posted videos of reckless driving – were killed when their car travelling in the wrong direction on the M9 crashed into another vehicle. The Irish police said: “In some cases it is being done for social media likes.”
Several factors are behind this trend, experts say. Young men have long been sensation seekers with a tendency to push whatever limits adults impose, according to Sonia Livingstone, professor of social psychology at the London School of Economics and an expert in social media harms.
Social media now extends the momentary thrill of speed with the promise of clout and glory as the drivers’ exploits spread through the internet. It is a case, Livingstone said, of “putting their foot down in the offline world knowing it wins them points in the online world”. If views rise high enough, there is also the prospect of cash rewards from some of the social media companies.
“There is a lot of research on how the online world of fame and visibility is increasingly significant for boys and young men in a context in which they don’t have a lot of other ways of affirmation,” said Livingstone, who called the incidents absolutely horrifying.
“We might ask how else boys and young men get a moment of affirmation,” she said. “Many young people are feeling depressed and hopeless about the future. It doesn’t offer them opportunities to shine and a path where they can see their future.”
The reach of the most popular accounts can be huge. Joseph Ondrak, director at Peryton Intelligence, a company that monitors harmful online subcultures, identified a user called Squeeze Benz with more than a million followers on TikTok and Instagram and another called wheres981 with 457,000 YouTube followers. Their clips “show some incredibly dangerous driving” and have been “key in popularising the squeezing/swimming/gapping trend”, said Ondrak. He said infamy and subcultural influence appeared to be greater driving forces than monetisation.
“Both of these accounts and others like them also have an army of ‘clippers’ taking key moments from streams and longer videos and editing them for short-form and compilation consumption for higher engagement and reach,” Ondrak said.
The government reaction has been to demand the big tech platforms remove posts of dangerous driving. A spokesperson said Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, is seeking assurances from the tech companies and from the online communications regulator Ofcom “that this content is being proactively sought and removed in line with their legal obligations and that accounts that post this type of activity are shut down immediately”.
Ofcom last month launched a separate investigation into TikTok amid concerns about children being exposed to harmful content. Dangerous driving is not mentioned among the categories of illegal content listed in the 2023 Online Safety Act which focuses on issues such as child sexual abuse, terrorism, suicide and self-harm. However, it could be considered harmful to children under the category of content promoting dangerous challenges. If so, the law requires platforms to protect children – but not anyone 18 or over – from seeing it.
TikTok said it removes videos and accounts that break its rules including content that glorifies violence, or promotes crimes that could harm people, that depicts activities likely to be imitated and that could cause significant physical harm, including risky driving. Yet clips of dangerous driving were not hard to find on Monday.
One TikTok user, CrazyGappers, showed a driver hurtling down the M25 towards Dartford in a clip titled “Serious driving #driving #gapped #racing”. Another shows a driver accelerating to high speeds along unlit lanes with the caption “nothing can top full sending your car on your favourite b roads” #fullsends #backroads”. On Instagram Ukdriverz has a clip titled “200mph on UK roads” with the caption “entertainment purposes only” while on YouTube, 2.5 million people have watched a clip of a Honda being driven at breakneck speed through a council estate and then down a narrow country road.
Instagram’s owner, Meta, said it prohibits people from promoting, advocating for or encouraging participation in high-risk viral challenges, including the trend of dangerous driving against incoming traffic. After the Guardian highlighted it, Google, which runs YouTube, removed the channel showing the speeding Honda.
“We don’t allow content featuring harmful or dangerous activities that risk serious physical harm on YouTube,” a spokesperson said. “As such, we quickly removed the flagged videos, and terminated the associated channel.”
The fast-driving internet trend on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube is fed by footage shot from a driver’s perspective of cars going “#fullsend” – the jargon for roaring down dual carriageways – and “#gapping” or “#swimming”, as in weaving dangerously through packed traffic. The posts attract thousands, sometimes millions of views and have been described by Andy Burnham on Monday as “truly reprehensible” .
This report is published with credit to The Guardian. Full available text from the wire is above. Read on The Guardian →
Source: The Guardian · Robert Booth UK technology editor. Published 25 Aug 2026, 07:00 am.
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