Snapchat was warned for years its speed filter was dangerous. A dad paid with his memory.
A teen “speed game,” a man who can’t remember raising his kids and a company that kept the feature up for 7½ years. Here’s what happened, and what to switch on tonight.
🤯 WOW! For 7½ years, Snapchat let users stamp their real-life speed on a photo. Teens turned it into a game: Hit 100 mph, snap it, post it. Users, employees and even an investor warned the company. A 60-year-old dad was left unable to remember his own kids. Snap settled his case less than two weeks before a jury would have heard it.
Read time: 2.5 valuable minutes
ChatGPT/Kim Komando
I need your help: Add Komando.com as a preferred source on Google
This is a tough story to read. It was for me, but you need to know it.
Wentworth Maynard was a husband, a dad of three and an architectural draftsman who loved sitting courtside at his sons’ basketball games. In 2015, at 60, he was driving for Uber outside Atlanta.
One rainy night, an 18-year-old in a Mercedes slammed into his car. A passenger swore under oath the young driver was chasing 100 mph on Snapchat’s speed filter so she could post it. The last speed she remembers seeing: 113 mph.
Maynard spent weeks in a coma. He can’t walk unaided, cook or work. He doesn’t remember the house he renovated or his boys’ games. I read about him in this Bloomberg story (paywall link).
On Oct. 20, Snap settled a lawsuit 13 days before trial. Terms weren’t disclosed, and Snap admitted no liability. CEO Evan Spiegel said in his deposition that Snap was thoughtful about the design and had no regrets about the filter in this case.
🚨 They were warned, over and over
Court records show Snap heard the alarm bells for years:
- Users begged it to remove the filter, warning it was killing people.
- Snap’s own employees flagged it as a distracted-driving problem in 2015.
- An investor asked whether Snap had reconsidered.
Reports from Philadelphia, Tampa and Wisconsin tied deadly crashes to the filter. It stayed up until 2021.
The trend didn’t die with it. Drivers, many of them young, still film themselves weaving through traffic at illegal speeds for TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Search #speedhunters and see for yourself.
💬 How to talk to your teen about this
Your kid has probably seen these videos. Skip the lecture. Start a conversation.
- Ask, then listen. Try: “Have you seen those speeding videos on TikTok?” Let them talk first.
- Tell them about Wentworth. He wasn’t racing or filming. He was a dad driving home. A few hours of likes for someone else’s whole life. Terrible deal.
- Do the math. At 100 mph, a two-second glance at your phone means driving nearly a football field blind.
- Give them an out. If a friend starts speeding or filming, they text you “X.” You call with a fake emergency and pick them up. No questions.
- Set the rule. Turn on Driving Focus: Settings > Focus > Driving on iPhone, or Driving Mode under Digital Wellbeing on Android.
Snapchat removed the filter. You can remove the temptation, one honest talk at a time. You also might think about putting the whole family on HeyPolo. It calculates a driving score for you and each family member. More about that below.*
📩 Send this to someone who has a teen with a driver’s license.