Accident on Sydenham High Street

[Search East]

Evening,

First I was aware that there was an incident on Sydenham High Street, was when the bus I was on terminated at the stop before the roundabout. Couldn't get down the high street with police tape closing it off, but a group of offices were in the process of arresting one person who was struggling like mad and two plain clothed offices were having an argument with some guys in a car parked up right in front of the tape refusing to move. I understand from Twitter that 4 cars were involved in a crash, there were a lot of ambulances on the scene. Does anyone know anything further?

[Search East]

Looked like a bad crash between a few cars, some photos are now going up on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/search?q=Sydenham&s ... ode=photos

[chrisj1948]

I live just the other side of the Newlands Park lights from the accident site, but failed to notice any crash noises and didn't go out to take a look until I read your post at about 22:30. By that time there were only two police cars, and a lorry whose driver seemed to be picking up pieces of the broken traffic light. Only one car left; an Audi with significant damage to the front nearside and some battering on the rear offside.

The CCTV camera looking out over my front garden doesn't cover the junction, but from about 20:30 the traffic patterns indicated something had happened, and from 20:37 the reflections of blue lights were visible. By 20:55 there seemed to be a lot of onlookers.

Regards
Chris

[Parker1970]

2 Cars and a motorcycle of which 1 car and the motorcycle were parked (2 people hospitlalised), but then a fight broke out involving a lot of people, 4 arrested.

http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news ... nham_Road/

[stuart]

Blimey - is it my imagination or is the front wheel and engine missing in picture 1?

Doesn't look the sort of crash damage and positioning you would expect at legal speeds. I guess we can be very thankful there were presumably no pedestrians waiting to cross at that traffic light. The body count could have been serious.

Stuart

[Parker1970]

No Stuart, the front wheel is not missing... it's just about 10 yards up the street!! I went to have a look and the car was indeed smashed up really really badly. I am surprised that the injuries were only minor but it was a newish car so likely had good air bags.

I'm guessing the severity was probably due to the fact it was persistently precipitating (pissing down with rain!) at the time.

[stuart]

Yes, I see the wheel and suspension in picture 2 - on the pavement! The problem is that any pedestrians present would not have any air bags to protect themselves from flying traffic lights and wheels.

Rain doesn't have any impact on the considerable inertial energy being dissipated in this incident (accident makes a presumption that may not be true). We surely shouldn't be seeing that much at a difficult junction no matter what the weather?

Stuart

[Parker1970]

Yes, I see the wheel and suspension in picture 2 - on the pavement! The problem is that any pedestrians present would not have any air bags to protect themselves from flying traffic lights and wheels.

Rain doesn't have any impact on the considerable inertial energy being dissipated in this incident (accident makes a presumption that may not be true). We surely shouldn't be seeing that much at a difficult junction no matter what the weather?

Stuart

Especially given that there are three sets of pedestrian traffic lights prior to where the accident occured, it amazes me that they could have been travelling at such a speed. Even at that time of night there is usually too much traffic and the pedestrian lights going on stop so often it beggars belief that they could have built up enough speed to cause that level of impact.

The big black box (about 5 feet high) that controls the trafffic lights at that junction (on the pavement) was also hit, it was knocked and tilted back about 45 degrees into the pavement with all the wires pulled out at the base, so yeah, the fact no pedestrians were hit is a miracle in itself.

[maestro]

. I am surprised that the injuries were only minor but it was a newish car so likely had good air bags.

I had an accident in a newish car on 4th March with four out of seven of my airbags deploying in a head-on collision at the Westwood Hill/Crystal Palace Park Road junction. They actually caused rather than prevented injury. Although I didn't make contact with any airbag, the noise of the impact together with the explosions of the four going off has left me with permanent hearing loss, and tinnitus howling in both ears 24 hours a day. The other party was entirely at fault so a compensation claim for injury is currently going through but I wish this had just never happened to me, it's had a huge impact on my life.

There's quite a lot on-line about this sort of injury due to airbag deployment, I wasn't even aware of it until it happened to me.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/282139.stm

[SepticSkeptic]

Ah. This probably explains why there was a shell oil tanker struggling to negotiate Newlands/homecroft last night. Must have been diverted.

[mikej]

According to the Standard, the crash led to a brawl involving 25 people!!

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/au ... rnalSearch

[Parker1970]

According to the Standard, the crash led to a brawl involving 25 people!!

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/au ... rnalSearch

yup, with 4 arrests. News-shopper has a video of some of it :-

http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/11580 ... ad/?ref=mr