UPDATED The London Ambulance Service took a middle-aged male cyclist to a major trauma centre after he fell from his bike on Putney High Street shortly after midday on Sunday. It is the sixth serious crash on this stretch in just over two years.
“We were called at 1.12pm today to reports of a road traffic collision in Putney High Street, SW15,” the LAS said. “We sent an ambulance crew and two paramedics in fast response cars to the scene. The first paramedic arrived in around six minutes. We treated a patient at the scene and took him to a major trauma centre as a priority.”
The Metropolitan Police, which sent officers to help manage traffic, confirmed the cyclist had fallen from his own bike and was not struck by another vehicle.
The traffic was already backing up into side streets when the crash triggered a massive traffic disruption. Police closed the road to one-way traffic, with congestion stretching from Disraeli Road to the A205 South Circular and backing deep into residential streets including Hotham Road, Charlwood Road and Felsham Road. “Awful, backed to the common and usual rat run on Felsham,” one local resident explained.
Emily Reed, whose son witnessed the incident, described the scene. “My son saw a cyclist with blood pouring from their face and emergency services attending to the man. He was in a bad way,” she wrote. “This is avoidable – the constant congestion causes erratic driving when people have an inch of space.”
Other residents have described seeing a number of pools of blood and what they described as a serious injury to the man’s face. At the time of writing, we do not know the condition of the cyclist or the exact circumstances in which he was hurt.
A road with a record
Sunday’s crash is the sixth serious collision on Putney High Street or its immediate junctions in 26 months. Three of the six have ended with victims being taken to a major trauma centre: in April 2024, in June 2025, and now today. The council has not published a safety review of the High Street corridor since any of those incidents.
The February 2026 collision at the Disraeli Road box junction had already identified the contraflow cycling system at that junction as unsafe. Cyclists cross the High Street against traffic flow into a bike rack bottleneck. Today’s victim is a cyclist. In April this year, Putney.news documented six uncoordinated cycling systems on this stretch with no safety plan to reconcile them.
“How many more accidents are we going to see before something is done?” asked Mick Stone, a local resident, after the February collision. That question has not been answered and now we have another serious accident.
The Metropolitan Police confirmed the cyclist had fallen from his own bike and was not struck by another vehicle. Officers attended to assist with traffic management. The London Ambulance Service said it was unable to provide any update on the patient’s condition once he was under hospital care.
Cyclists the ones I come across are cycling dangerously side by side stopping cars weaving in and out of traffic, not stopping at red light. Plus they are given silly cycle lanes which will suddenly merge into traffic. So dangerous it’s time the council opened up the Hammersmith bridge somuch traffic does not need to pass through the high st.
Cyclists can be part of the problem, certainly from the perspective of pedestrians. But drivers do need to remember just how vulnerable cyclists are on the roads. A car might get a dent or a scratch in a collision but a cyclist could easily end up like the poor unfortunate on PHS yesterday.
It’s easy to say, but we all need to show more consideration to fellow road users, whether drivers or cyclists, or pedestrians of course.
How on earth does anyone manage to create a serious crash situation with traffic either stationary or travelling at walking speed? And six times.