2023-01-29 Rider down, A40 Western Avenue, near the junction with the B456 Alperton Lane

Terrible bad luck:

A cyclist has been left with life-changing injuries after a car flew into a west London cycle path and struck him as he rode his bike.

Mark Thomas, 59 , was cycling along a dedicated route by the A40 near his home in Ealing around 7.40am on January 29, when the horror crash happened.

The driver of a black car is understood to have struck a crash barrier designed to protect the cycle lane, sending the car airborne and flying into Mr Thomas.

The dad-of-four was rushed by air ambulance to St Mary’s Hospital, where he underwent five-hour emergency surgery to save his life.

The crash left Mr Thomas with “severe, life-changing injuries”, losing the equivalent of all the blood in his body, and needing skin grafts to his legs.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/ealing-cyclist-hit-by-car-crash-bike-path-life-changing-injuries-b1058852.html

Mark Thomas, 59, was on the cycle path in Greenford, near the junction with Alperton Lane, when he was sent flying into the air by a car.

https://www.mylondon.news/news/west-london-news/ealing-dad-knocked-bike-a40-26178881

It's hard to say where exactly this may have been, as there are several sections fitted with crash barriers (old-style and not very effective) close to the Alperton Lane junction, north and south of the A40. Here's one such section:

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5319141,-0.3099074,3a,75y,257.32h,78.11t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1smcdMughCKQAm1EgFkCuL4Q!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

(What is described in the articles as a 'cycle lane' is actually a shared-use path, i.e. for cyclists and pedestrians.)

Although medical opinions as conveyed in the article sound pessimistic, here's to Mark recovering as well as possible.

Donation made to the GoFundMe linked to in the Evening Standard article, a small way of supporting Mark and his family.

The photo in the Standard indicates it’s around where the a40 converges from traffic from the Hanger Lane junction and the underpass for through a40 traffic.

This has freaked me out a bit because we ride down there with the kids on our way to and back from town.

Recently - December probably - we were cycling back that way and passed a car that had left the road, travelled across the path , across the verge then embedded itself in to a tree at enough speed to cleave its front section in two.

Clearly this section of road attracts horrible driving and horrible incidents.

It’s also close to that section where that prick hit a barrier so hard his car ended up on the underground line, killing his passenger.

After reading about this ^^ we won’t be walking or cycling down here any more .

Thanks, I didn't see that image because I didn't have Javascript turned on. I think it's more here, though?

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5313325,-0.3065201,3a,75y,256.7h,92.1t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1stbbQYnqxSUwlE0vfbyVERQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

The lanes only start to get divided further east:

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Alperton+Ln,+Wembley/@51.5306647,-0.2981489,80m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x48761215103e4125:0x1949b4da1e2f61cb!8m2!3d51.5339283!4d-0.3044616!16s%2Fg%2F1x5qs7yl

The picture indicates that it happened on the westbound side.

Recently we were cycling back that way and passed a car that left the road, travelled across the path , across the verge then embedded itself in to a tree at enough speed to cleave its front section in two

Terrible, and both crashes probably caused by excessive speed. There is a 40 limit there, but it's unlikely that this is generally observed. I'm sure there'll be data on it somewhere.