Seven people, including two police officers, were killed early Saturday morning in a crash on the A66 near Middlesbrough in northeastern England.
The collision happened after police pursued a suspicious vehicle which ended up being driven the wrong way and crashed head-on into a police car travelling on the correct side of the road. Authorities are still investigating the exact circumstances.
The deaths come just days after five teenagers were killed in Ireland on Sunday when their car travelled the wrong way on the M9 motorway west of Dublin. The vehicle collided head-on with another car, leaving four people in the second vehicle seriously injured, including a child.
Authorities in both countries have raised concerns about a social media-driven trend for wrong-side driving.
Ireland’s taoiseach (head of government) Micheal Martin said Sunday’s crash was the latest in a series of incidents involving vehicles driven on the wrong side of motorways.
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“There can be no tolerance for this reckless behaviour that we have seen on our roads recently. It must stop,” he said.
Police chief Justin Kelly said the incident followed a similar collision on Dublin’s M50 motorway and warned that “what makes this reckless behaviour even more appalling is that in some cases it is being done for social media”.
The M50 crash a week earlier involved a stolen vehicle carrying teenagers that was driven the wrong way, causing multiple serious injuries.
Earlier in August, footage filmed inside a stolen car while it was being pursued by police emerged on social media.
