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Thanks for your thoughts, I have been back to the site of the accident, here are some photos of the road markings, I am fairly convinced that i didn't hit the manhole unless I went flying 50m down the road to where I ended up, but could be wrong.
I do have the contact of a witness so may need her version of events.
Here are some photos of the road markings are they unnecessarily bumpy? I believe the maximum raised height is 5mm?
jazzythumper-
It's hard to tell from the pictures, but these look completely fine to me (as road markings go). I'd be extremely surprised if it was this paint that caused your fall (but I'm not an expert). I've certainly seen paint markings that I think could have caused falls, but they were raised up much higher than these (sometimes caused by several stages of re-painting them).
I imagine you've probably thought about this possibility, but could there have been some kind of object in the carriageway that might have been caromed away by you hitting it, so that you didn't notice it when inspecting the spot a little later? Apologies if that was definitely not the case.
Oliver Schick
Sorry to hear about your injuries, jazzythumper. I haven't seen the markings in question, but if they're raised, that suggests they are simply painted, as bus lane markings generally are. Road markings are obviously renewed all the time, and one almost never hears about crashes being caused by them. It might be worth investigating whether perhaps one of the lines was raised too high, i.e. the paint was applied too thickly, so that it was the upstand that would have caused your fall. It was most definitely not any kind of slipperiness. It's a well-known problem that a large number of falls occur when people ride over slight upstands, e.g. at kerbs, that they don't expect and for which they don't have any evasive strategy. When I say 'slight', I mean that; it can be a matter of millimetres. This particularly affects older riders.
It may sound ridiculous to explore this, but notwithstanding how minor the particular feature of the markings may have been, you suffered some pretty serious injuries, and I believe there are regulations for the upstand of the paint in road markings. It's certainly unlucky, but that doesn't necessarily absolve the highway authority (in this case TfL) of responsibility, silly though it may sound to argue over millimetres.