2011-11-04 - Rider Down, East Smithfield / Dock St Junction

A reporter from The Times is in a critical condition in hospital after a collision with a lorry while cycling across a notoriously dangerous junction near the newspaper’s Wapping offices.
Mary Bowers, 27, a news reporter and feature writer at The Times, was only 100 yards from arriving at the News International building on the morning of November 4 when the collision happened.
A 39-year-old man was arrested at the scene on suspicion of careless driving and bailed while investigations continue, the Metropolitan Police confirmed. Ms Bowers was conscious when emergency services arrived at the scene within three minutes of the accident, but was heavily sedated immediately and taken to hospital in a life-threatening condition, with serious injuries to her legs, pelvis and arm.
Though her condition is now deemed “critical but stable”, she has yet to regain consciousness, having been in a coma in intensive care for more than four weeks. Her family and friends are at her bedside.
Her accident comes as the number of cyclist deaths on London’s roads rose to 16 so far this year — six more than the whole of last year.
Ms Bowers first joined The Times as a graduate trainee reporter in September 2009, though she had already spent time at the paper as a freelance researcher in the Foreign and Comment departments. She had previously worked as a news reporter at The Times of India in Delhi.
During the two years of her traineeship, she excelled as a news reporter and arts journalist, showing a particular flair for feature writing and a passion for social affairs investigations into domestic abuse, women’s prisons and care homes. After finishing her traineeship in August this year she was taken on as a full-time news reporter and recently covered the London riots, the Julian Assange extradition hearings and investigations into nightclub safety standards.
She has also written numerous witty and colourful features for Times 2.
After graduating in 2007 from Queen’s College, Cambridge, with a degree in History, Ms Bowers went on to study journalism at the prestigious Columbia University in New York, where she was an O’Hara-Forster scholar, having previously been editor of the renowned Varsity student newspaper at Cambridge. She also regularly volunteered at the Brent-Eton summer school for teenagers from disadvantaged backgrounds and worked for a development charity in Lesotho on an Aids education programme.
She is a guitarist and singer-songwriter, performing with Mary Bowers & The Wrong Collective and, more recently, playing solo on the London folk circuit. Her musical talents have made her a key part of The Times’s music coverage, and she is already a veteran reporter of Britain’s biggest music festivals, filing reports from the quagmires of Glastonbury, Latitude, Bestival, Green Man and others.
Though cyclist deaths on London’s roads have fallen in the past five years — from 19 in 2006 to 10 last year — there have been an average of 402 serious injuries per year for cyclists during that time.
Two of these accidents – the deaths of Brian Dorling, 58, and Svitlana Tereschenko, 34 – took place recently at the roundabout in Bow where the junction is crossed by the Cycle Superhighway, leading cycle campaign groups to call for greater measures to protect cyclists and to make life easier for motorists trying to avoid them.
Eleanor Carey, 22, a student from Guernsey, was killed while cycling by a lorry on Friday, December 2, at the junction of Tower Bridge Road and Abbey Street. She is the 16th cyclist to be killed in London this year.
Any witnesses to the accident on the corner of The Highway and Dock Street, East London at 9.30am on Friday, November 4, are asked to contact police on 020-8597 4874.