They call it the UK Street racing capital for good reason.
Racing across Birmingham, for those who take part, is a daily obsession. Every night, as soon as it gets dark, flashy cars with loud exhausts, tinted windows and custom plates take to the streets across the West Midlands.
And it’s not just a problem here – it’s across the country as ITV Tonight and ITV News Central reports.
We understand there are hundreds of groups set up over encrypted social media sites like WhatsApp and Telegram – and we’ve managed to get access into some of them.
We wanted to know why – why do the racers take to the streets? And the best way was to immerse ourselves in their world, and talk to them ourselves.
"Not here but the fastest I gone to was 178 bro."
"Down on the M1, M40 yeah. On the way back from Heathrow back to Birmingham."
‘It’s an achievement, it’s an achievement man’
On the nights we went out, we weren’t sure what to expect. We’d seen the pictures on social media and heard the noise at night.
In the chats that we were in, all of a sudden they lit up. We’d seen hundreds of deleted messages, but just below a new one appeared.
A picture, with just a postcode, and a time – with no more information.
With trepidation, we made our way over there. But when we got there, we were too late.
The cars that were there had already left. But we did see the tyre marks that they left behind.
The next location appeared and it soon became clear how the night might unfold – a new location would appear, we would drive there, but because we were driving at the speed limit, most of the time the racers had already moved on.
On the night we travelled to Dudley, Wolverhampton, Walsall, Birmingham and even as far as Worcester. It was mainly industrial estates, dual carriageways and roundabouts.
We often weren’t even sure that we were heading to the right places. But as soon as we got close, we could hear from their loud exhausts and screeching tyres that we were there.
On the night we filmed footage of cars drifting and speeding past us and racing against each other. Some of the cars would drive past us at more than 150 miles per hour.
One main location in West Bromwich stayed on the chat for a while before being deleted. It left us enough time to catch up with the racers themselves.
The people we spoke to told us they feel at one with the road here, and that despite risking their lives driving at such speeds, the thrill that they get makes them feel alive.
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