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NEW YORK: Snapchat has removed the controversial “speed filter” that lets users capture how fast they are moving and share it with friends.
According to details, the feature was removed after it was blamed for encouraging dangerous speeding by safety advocates and families of car crash victims. The move is a dramatic reversal for Snap, Inc., which introduced the feature in 2013.
The company has also faced lawsuits from the families of those who have been injured or killed in car crashes where drivers were moving at excessive speeds, allegedly to score bragging rights on the app.
Critics of the speed filter welcomed the news, while also questioning the delay. “Lives will be saved. Crashes will be prevented, but why did it take so long?” said Joel Feldman, the co-founder of the nonprofit End Distracted Driving, one of the groups that urged Snapchat to remove the speed filter.
Earlier, a company spokeswoman said, “Nothing is more important than the safety of our Snapchat community.” A month later, the same spokeswoman confirmed the speed filter would soon be gone.
The feature “is barely used by Snapchatters,” she said, adding, “And in light of that, we are removing it altogether.” She said the company started removing the feature this week, but it may be a couple weeks before it disappears from the app for all of its 500 million monthly active users.
Lawyer Michael Neff, who has represented the families of those involved in car crashes linked to the filter, said the change does not undo the pain of his clients. “While this will no doubt serve the safety of the motoring public moving forward, it does not remedy Snapchat’s choice to create and distribute the speed filter in the past,” Neff said.
The feature has been connected to a number of deadly or near-fatal car crashes, often with teenagers behind the wheel. A 2015 collision involving the speed filter left a driver in Georgia with permanent brain damage. That same year, the feature was tied to the death of three young women in a Philadelphia car accident.
In 2016, five people in Florida died in a high-speed collision that reportedly involved the speed filter. In 2017, three young men in Wisconsin clocked a speed of 123 miles per hour on the feature before they crashed into a tree and died.
