Birmingham ‘City of Cars’ film dedicated to young lives cut short by motorists

Mayar Yahia and Azaan Khan are remembered in a new documentary film pressing for action to make our city safer

05:30, 18 Jun 2025Updated 07:18, 18 Jun 2025

The story of car-related violence on Birmingham's roads and families torn apart as a result is told in a profoundly moving new short film created by a Birmingham[1] video journalist.

Sarah Chaundler's 'City of Cars' movie, shot over 18 months, is a compelling call to drive bad motorists off the road.

It tracks the work of activists and grieving parents battling to get those in power to heed the impact when inattentive, speeding, reckless or drug-fuelled drivers are behind the wheel.

The documentary highlights calls for better education and tougher enforcement with a pressing need to 'reclaim the streets' from cars.

A premiere of the film and a discussion about its content and messages takes place at the Mockingbird Cinema in Digbeth on Thursday, June 26, from 6pm to 7.30pm. Tickets, costing GBP5, are available here.[3]

The documentary features heartfelt testimony from the parents of four-year-old Mayar Yahia, killed when a car struck her as she walked with her siblings and mother from an Eid[4] celebration in Highgate. It also features a community protest following the death of Azaan Khan, 12, who died while cycling to school on Coventry Road, Yardley.

Beautifully shot and written by former BBC[5]-turned-freelance video journalist and film-maker Chaundler, mum of three, the film features campaigning events, interviews and data.

The number of serious injuries and fatalities on the city's roads has gone up significantly in the last ten years.

In 2014 there were 411 serious injuries or deaths. By 2023 that had gone up to 498, up 20 per cent.

"It can feel we have become numb to this immense human tragedy," Chaundler says of the data.

Chris Boardman, former Olympic cyclist and now active travel commissioner for the country, introduces the film by highlighting his desire for 'safer' streets for children and young people to walk and cycle. Like others in the film, he has lost a loved one on the roads - his mother was killed by a distracted driver in 2016, and he speaks of his painful loss and determination to bring change.

Chaundler sets out the reality of living in a city where 'car is king' and where 'driving dominates, collisions are everyday occurrences and traffic is often at a standstill, the air thick with pollution.'

Footage captured by Chaundler and from CCTV cameras, along with mobile phone footage from activists, shows drivers jumping red lights and using their mobile phones while driving, speeding through packed residential streets, and parking with impunity on pavements and cycle routes.

Daniel Knowles, Brummie author of the book Carmageddon, highlights how Birmingham's mid 20th century planners encouraged road building, with multi lane highways carved through city communities, from the inner and outer ring roads with their underpasses and bridges, the Gravelly Hill Interchange (better known as Spaghetti Junction) and Aston Expressway.

"Birmingham had this incredible bad luck to be one of the richest cities in Europe in the 1950s at this point where this ideology of 'cars must come first' was so dominant," he says in the film.

The city's chief engineer of the time, Herbert Manzoni, was the roads enthusiast whose fingerprints persist in the roads circling the city.

Says Knowles: "Other British cities did not have the money....so Birmingham got blighted and spread out and it's left this legacy of these enormous roads."

"We need to drive less and rediscover we can get about in other ways," adds Knowles. "We need to invest in public transport and rebuild our city around people, not cars."

The city's concrete collar has been partly redesigned, with more pedestrian areas and a handful of cycle routes, since then, says Chaundler in the film - but it's 'painfully slow'.

Among the incidents highlighted in detail are the case of a young schoolboy and his older sister, run over while crossing at pedestrian lights on Kings Heath[7] High Street in a hit-and-run incident in 2023. In an exclusive piece of footage, the driver, high on drugs and drink, is seen tearing along at 60mph in a 20mph zone, overtaking cars queued up at a crossing, moments before the crash.

He was later convicted and given a 32-month jail term and a three-year driving ban. "His victims will live with the physical and psychological scars for the rest of their lives," intones Chaundler.

The serious injury cases came just days before schoolboy Azaan was killed on Coventry Road, Yardley[8]. The motorist involved, Shazad Alam, had been weaving in and out of traffic and using the bus lane to undertake other drivers, and was estimated to have been doing up to 62mph at the point of impact.

Chaundler's film highlights some of the 11 protest events held at crossings and junctions around the city to encourage drivers to slow down, and the street takeovers that followed, inspired by Better Streets campaigners.

Mat MacDonald, a hospital doctor and the campaign's original driving force, is now road safety commissioner for the West Midlands.

He is a thoughtful, passionate presence throughout the film.

Speaking to Chaundler at his home while planning a new phase of the campaign, he reveals for the first time that it was a road tragedy in his own family that ignited his zeal to demand change.

His elder brother was killed by a motorist when Mat was just five. The moment has 'shaped his life since', he admits.

He says of the film: "City of Cars is an unflinching account of the human cost underlying Birmingham's atrocious record on road safety. It is a story of grief and loss but also of solidarity and hope, as communities across the city came together to call time on the harms they have suffered through decades of car-first planning.

"For anyone invested in a future where our children are safe on the streets they call home, this film is essential viewing."

Chaundler says she was inspired to act because of concern about the standards of driving on the roads. "What I was witnessing on the roads and the streets around me as I made my way around the city with three children was very troubling.

"I vividly remember the death of Hope Fennell, a little girl crushed under a lorry in Kings Heath.

The horror of that is constantly with me. My children went on to the same school as Hope, and the ghost bike propped at the crossing where she died is a constant reminder.

"I believe we should be more active, it's a healthy way to be, but I see it is not safe for my children to do so in many parts of Birmingham.

"When I saw there was a campaign group starting to look into this I wanted to help, and this film is the result of my desire to document what was happening."

She added: "We have come to accept that what we see on our roads is normal, when it is not, it is just not acceptable.

"We need to shift our perception about how we move around the city and reduce the amount of traffic so those who really need to use their cars can do so."

Traffic on Birmingham's roads is projected to increase by 22 per cent over the next three decades.

The film screening will be followed by a panel discussion featuring Mr MacDonald, police and crime commissioner Simon Foster and Roadpeace campaigner Lucy Harrison. Jane Haynes, politics and people editor for BirminghamLive, will host the discussion.

It is part of the Flatpack Film Festival programme.

Ian Francis, director of the festival, said: "It's very hard to live in Birmingham and not be aware of the growing issues around dangerous driving in our city.

"At Flatpack we believe that film events are a brilliant way to encourage conversation, so it was an easy decision to include this screening in our monthly series in partnership with Mockingbird.

City of Cars is a powerful piece of work and deserves to be seen."

The film is dedicated to the lives of Mayar Yahia and Azaan Khan.

References

1. ^ Birmingham (www.birminghammail.co.uk)
2. ^ The names and faces of those who met violent deaths on our roads (www.birminghammail.co.uk)
3. ^ available here. (flatpackfestival.org.uk)
4. ^ Eid (www.birminghammail.co.uk)
5. ^ BBC (www.birminghammail.co.uk)
6. ^ The heartbreaking night I lost my 'very good girl' - grieving dad demands action on road deaths (www.birminghammail.co.uk)
7. ^ Kings Heath (www.birminghammail.co.uk)
8. ^ Yardley (www.birminghammail.co.uk)