It was a Sunday evening and hundreds of music revellers were lined up outside the O2 Academy, eagerly awaiting for the gig to start. As it often happens, the line arched around the corner of Pagoda Island and up along the hill of Holloway Head, where my wife and I joined it with a good 30 minutes to go until doors opened.

Being a late October evening, and having dressed lightly in anticipation of being in a crowded room, our initial thoughts were on the slight chilly air. But it quickly became apparent there were greater distractions. And it wasn't the pizza man from a nearby store, offering free slices of pizza to people in the queue, as his colleague filmed it.

It was the brazen speeding that was taking place from Pagoda Island and up Holloway Head, involving souped-up cars, one after the other, seemingly equipped with turbochargers and thundering exhausts. There were high-performance BMWs, Mercedes and even a Lamborghini that appeared multiple times - I'm not against cars at all, I'm actually a car enthusiast, just not of dangerous driving.

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The traffic had been bad getting into Birmingham that evening, but there was a short gap of road on that hill, allowing drivers to test out their acceleration to the full, perhaps aiming to impress those in the queue. On the back of heightened concerns about road safety in Birmingham this year, it was concerning to see this blatant disregard for the rules.

The speed limit in Birmingham city centre is 30mph on many roads, and 20mph on others. But as the cars flew past us along Holloway Head and out of sight, the pitches of their acceleration continued up the hill, still ringing in our ears, and their speedometers were clearly surpassing well over 30mph.

It wasn't just 'racers' in their cars presenting danger, though. There was a rider on a stand-up scooter - which is currently banned from public roads - that went flying down Holloway Head and merged onto Pagoda Island, without even braking or taking heed of the cars already on the roundabout, and a crash was just inches away.

For campaigners who want to see road safety improved in Birmingham, it appeared their concerns were justified from that mere snapshot in time.