A slew of accidents on major roads in England and Ireland in which automobiles have been driven the wrong way have killed at least a dozen people in less than a week, continuing a social media trend of “wrong-side” driving.
Police reported seven individuals, including two serving police officers, were killed in a crash on the key A66 road near Middlesbrough in northeastern England early yesterday.
AFP says that authorities are looking into the exact circumstances, but say the crash happened after a chase of a suspicious vehicle that ended up being driven the wrong way and smashed into a police car that was on the right side of the road.
It comes after a deadly incident in Ireland on Sunday that killed five youngsters.
Their car was on the M9 highway west of Dublin driving in the wrong direction when it crashed with another car, badly injuring four persons in the second car, including a toddler.
The crash came after police warned of a social media trend of “wrong-way” driving.
“This is the latest in a series of incidents where people have been driving the wrong way on motorways,” Ireland’s taoiseach (prime minister) Micheal Martin remarked after Sunday’s fatal disaster.
“This dangerous activity we’ve witnessed on our highways recently cannot be tolerated. “It’s got to stop,” he remarked.
It followed a similar crash on Dublin’s M50 motorway, police Chief Justin Kelly saying: “Even more appalling is the fact that in some cases this reckless behaviour is happening for social media.
The M50 incident, where a stolen automobile driven by adolescents went the wrong way and injured a number of people seriously, happened a week earlier.
Earlier in August, footage from inside a stolen automobile chased by police also surfaced on social media in a separate incident.
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