TikTok doesn’t have viewing figures for Irish dangerous driving trends

Three social media giants were in front Oireachtas media committee today.

Facebook and Instagram's parent company Meta, TikTok, and YouTube owner Google appeared before the Oireachtas media committee today (Wednesday) to discuss irresponsible or illegal activity on their channels. X (Twitter) was invited but did not appear.

The invitation was sparked by an alleged "trend" of young men in the UK and Ireland recording videos of themselves driving dangerously and at times, on the wrong side of motorways.

Alan Kelly, Chair of the committee said Ireland was "at a watershed moment" and that he and his 16 year-old daughter watched some of these dangerous driving videos together.

The trend has been mentioned repeatedly after the deaths of five teenage boys in Kildare who drove the wrong way down the M9 in a BMW. Their car hit a family on their way to Dublin Airport. Three sisters and one small boy aged around 7 years-old remain in hospital.

TikTok did provide Irish figures on the number of videos that were flagged as depicting dangerous activities in general – which includes, but is not limited to wrong-way driving.

In the first half of 2026, 42,000 videos were detected, and 1,600 specifically following the M9 crash. TikTok also said that around 2% of these indicate wrong-way driving – which is around 30.

Google said that less than 10 Irish channels were removed from YouTube from the start of July to end of August this year.

Meta said that 10 videos were removed from December 1st last year, to September 5th this year, and since the M9 crash, 130 items that originated in Ireland have been detected that depict wrong-way driving, with 127 removed, and two restricted for underage users.

TikTok said that it spent around $2 billion (€1.75 billion) on online safety.

For context, Zachary Hecht, Global Head of Policy at TikTok, said that around 400,000 pieces of content are posted on TikTok in Ireland each day.

“In our Irish office, our people are our largest expenditure, and three quarters of the people in our Irish office are dedicated to the role of safety at TikTok,” Hecht said.

"Zachary Hecht, Global Head of Policy at TikTok said: "The responsibility for an act of criminality ultimately rests with the individual who chooses to commit it”.

“That does not however diminish the responsibility we have as a platform to ensure we are doing everything we can to prevent our services being used to promote or facilitate that behaviour."

The company said that the “priority is to prevent dangerous behaviour content from making its way onto our platform in the first place.”

TikTok has banned the account of at least one of the teenage boys who died in the fatal crash.

Fianna Fáil TD Peter 'Chap' Cleere asked TikTok whether the platform has ever recommended dangerous driving content to "someone who didn't search for it".

In response, Mr Hecht said TikTok if the content was not identified as violating terms, "there is a possibility that it would be recommended".