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Dangerous Driving Culture on Social Media
The top ten countries where social media normalises dangerous driving
It’s hard to miss the rise in driving stunts on social media – from flying down the motorway at hundreds of kilometres an hour to street racing through busy cities, platforms like TikTok, YouTube and Instagram are inundated daily with the latest adrenaline-fuelled driving escapades.
To further investigate this, iSelect delved into the world of dangerous driving on social media and has ranked the most prolific countries within this online sphere.
What is dangerous driving, and why is it so risky?
The Road Transport (Safety and Traffic Management) Act 1999 states that ‘A person must not drive a motor vehicle furiously, recklessly, or at a speed or in a way that is dangerous to the public, on a road or road-related area’.1https://www.legislation.act.gov.au/View/a/1999-80/current/html/1999-80.html It also prohibits ‘[driving] a motor vehicle negligently on a road or road-related area’ as well as the organisation or promotion of a race or speed test of a vehicle without proper permissions from the transport authority.
Driving illegally is incredibly dangerous for the driver of a vehicle, their passengers, other road users and everyone in the community. Aside from potentially creating a hostile or aggressive atmosphere, dangerous driving can cause damage to roads and pose a risk of life-changing injury or even death.
With more videos of speeding, stunts and street races cropping up all over social media, the glamourisation of dangerous driving creates a threat not only to the offender but to everyone around them.
Top 10 countries for promoting dangerous driving
1. Argentina – 62.29
Coming in at number one – with an index score more than twenty times higher than the lowest score on our list – is Argentina. With the most TikTok posts per million people using the #stunt hashtag and the second-highest online search for terms relating to dangerous driving per million people, make sure you double-check your travel insurance policy before taking to the roads as a tourist!
2. Singapore – 57.87
A country known for its strict laws and harsh punishments – including steep fines, imprisonment, caning and the death penalty – you might be surprised to find Singapore near the top of our list. However, there’s clearly an appetite for living on the wild side, as Singapore recorded the highest number of online searches per million people for terms related to dangerous driving.
Road safety remains a concern in Singapore, with the country seeing ‘an increase in the number of fatal and injury accidents, with the number of speeding violations reaching a 10-year high in 2024.2https://www.mha.gov.sg/mediaroom/media-detail/enhanced-penalties-for-speeding-offences/
3. Japan – 46.91
Japan is currently undertaking procedures to establish numerical criteria for dangerous driving offences, as current laws have been criticised as being overly vague. This ambiguity may encourage thrill-seekers to push boundaries on the road.3https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/09/30/japan/crime-legal/criteria-dangerous-driving/
In our study, Japan had the highest number of online mentions of street racing per million people. Although the Kanjozoku (street racing around the famous ‘Kanjo loop’ in Osaka) scene has simmered down significantly in recent years, it seems Japan still has a taste for speed.
4. Germany – 41.93
It’s perhaps not a shock that Germany, the home of the Autobahn and stretches of road with no legal speed limit, has the second-highest number of online mentions of street racing per million people. Take to TikTok or YouTube and you’ll find innumerable dash-cam videos of drivers flying down the fast lane.
The appeal for those with an interest in high-powered vehicles is clear, but so are the abundant risks; a crash at 130km/h is almost guaranteed to end in fatalities, and many of these videos showcase drivers going well over 400km/h.
5. New Zealand – 38.66
The breathtaking scenery in New Zealand makes it endlessly popular with an aesthetics-driven social media audience, but sometimes it’s not for the right reasons. Laws in New Zealand make it illegal to race, make an unnecessary exhibition of speed, or pour substances onto the road to induce loss of traction, and breaking these laws can result in loss of your license and the impounding or even destruction of your vehicle.
Despite this, our research showed that large numbers of New Zealanders are searching online for terms relating to dangerous driving, and there are many mentions of street racing in social media content shared in the country.
6. USA – 38.00
The USA devours social media content like no other.4https://www.castmagic.io/post/tiktok-usage-by-country Dangerous driving – or reckless driving, as it’s known – laws, offences and penalties differ by state, but featuring highly in our list for online mentions of street racing per million people and vehicle and transportation content tagged with #stunt, it seems plenty of Americans are taking the risk.
7. France – 37.94
France holds the second-highest average sentiment towards street racing, with a score of 6.05/10, beaten only by the Philippines, which scores 6.25. As a country with a larger road network and lower population than the UK, it should, in theory, have safer, emptier roads. Still, the positive sentiment towards street racing is reflected in the higher road death toll, with the UK seeing 1,633 in 2024 compared to France’s 3,193.
8. Australia – 37.89
Coming in at number eight is Australia itself, where iSelect’s 2025 Dangerous Driving Behaviours survey found that 7.7% of Australian drivers admitted to using social media while driving, 3.5% admitted taking selfies or filming themselves, and 2.2% admitted to racing another driver, with Gen Z (the first digital natives, aged 18-24) the most likely age group to commit each of these offences.
Sixteen per cent of serious road crash casualties resulting in hospital attendance in Australia are due to distracted driving, so make sure you put down your phone before you hit the road.5https://www.nrspp.org.au/resources/nrspp-fact-sheet-distracted-driving-what-you-need-to-know/
9. Colombia – 34.67
Colombia’s roads are known for their risk factor – much of the land bordering Venezuela and Ecuador is considered a level four ‘Do Not Travel’ risk according to ST.6https://www.smartraveller.gov.au/destinations/americas/colombia Dangerous and aggressive driving is common, particularly in more rural areas. The high number of #stunt videos on TikTok suggests that social media perpetuates this type of lifestyle.
10. United Kingdom – 33.83
The UK came in at number ten in our index, with the fourth-highest number of #stunt posts per million people in the ‘Vehicles and Transportation’ tab on TikTok. Dangerous driving in the UK is contextualised by law as driving far below the standard that would be expected of them, where ‘it would be obvious to a competent and careful driver that driving in that way would be dangerous’.7https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1991/40/section/1 With a dangerous driving index score of 33.83, it seems that plenty of people are meeting that criteria.
“Driving dangerously isn’t just a risk to yourself – if you lose control of your vehicle, or if unforeseen factors come into play, which are always a risk in public spaces, you can go from having the time of your life to a life-changing injury or the death of an innocent person in a split second.
“Social media not only glamorises the thrill of dangerous driving, but also desensitises us to the potential aftermath, and it’s critical that we take dangerous driving offences seriously.
“In terms of car insurance, if you’re convicted of a dangerous driving offence, you’re likely to face increased insurance excesses, elevated premiums and even policy cancellations from any insurance provider, if you can find coverage at all.”
Adrian Bennett
General Manager – General Insurance at iSelect
Written by:
Sarah Grealy
Digital Public Relations Specialist
0413 363 690
Sarah is our Digital Public Relations Specialist, and brings more than a decade of experience in the insurance comparison industry to iSelect.
With a passion for storytelling through data-driven insights, Sarah strives to empower Aussies with practical guides and tips.
About the data
This dataset ranks countries around the world based on the prevalence of dangerous driving content across digital and social platforms. The index measures how engaged each nation is with content linked to reckless driving behaviours such as street racing, speeding and stunt driving. Each country was assessed across four key data sources: Google search demand, TikTok content volume, Brandwatch social mentions, and Brandwatch sentiment data. All metrics were normalised per capita and scaled between 0 and 1, before being combined into a total score out of 100. Countries with higher scores demonstrate stronger engagement with dangerous driving content online, suggesting a greater cultural presence of risk-taking behaviours.
Supplementary analysis
This index highlights where online interest and participation in dangerous driving culture are most prominent. Countries showing high engagement across search, social and sentiment channels can be considered at greater risk of normalising or glamorising reckless driving. The inclusion of sentiment analysis adds valuable context, distinguishing countries where engagement is light-hearted or entertainment-driven from those where it reflects genuine enthusiasm for risky behaviour.
The factors used were:
– Google search demand: search volume for dangerous driving, reckless driving, and speeding-related keywords, translated into local languages to ensure accurate representation of search intent. Found via DataForSEO
– TikTok content volume: number of public posts using the hashtag #stunt within the ‘Vehicles and Transportation’ category on TikTok Creative Center, collected over the past 12 months.
– Street racing mentions: total number of online mentions related to street racing across 50 languages, gathered from the last 12 months. Found via Brandwatch
– Sentiment data: average sentiment score towards street racing content, reflecting public attitudes towards dangerous driving culture. Found via Brandwatch.
Weighting:
– Google search demand: 25%
– TikTok content volume: 25%
– Street racing mentions: 25%
– Sentiment data: 25%
Indexing rules:
– Higher scores indicate stronger cultural engagement with dangerous driving content.
– All data was normalised per capita and scaled 0-1 before weighting and combination.
– Rankings reflect online cultural engagement rather than real-world offence or crash data.
– Population data sourced from World Population Review.
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