Unusually this doesn't seem to have been reported anywhere. I knew something had happened as the road was blocked off for several hours on Tuesday but only found out what happened from the staff at Boots today.

On Tuesday morning 16th Dec a police car thought to be involved in chasing another vehicle along Dartmouth Road crashed headlong into an oncoming car carrying a pregnant woman and her children . Apparently the woman and her children were not hurt however one of the police officers was seriously injured having had to have been cut out of the car during an lengthy operation by the fire brigade. The police car, I understand , had turned over onto its roof and the officers were trapped inside until cut free.

I am sure our sympathies go out to the injured officers and to everyone involved- thats a given. And no doubt we would all like to police to get to us pretty fast whenever we need them.
However from the perspective of a local pedestrian rather than a ghoulish onlooker I would like to know more about how the accident occured and whether going at speed down such a fairly narrow road with so many obstacles is inevitably going to result in an accident.

I'm surprised and very thankful that given the road layout the police car did not end up crashing into a shop/passing pedestrians and causing more carnage. After all its only two years ago that a child was seriously injured by a car in Dartmouth Road when a car travelling at speed mounted the pavement near the library and there have been other serious RTAs in the past.

Does anyone have any more information? Clearly there could be a number of factors involved here ie police driving, road layout, or just bad luck but I think as a community we should know what exactly happened on this occasion on a road frequented by many school children and Christmas shoppers.

I saw the immediate aftermath of accident, as was on bus going from Brockley Rise to Crystal Palace that got stopped - I carried on on foot past the scene, not knowing what was going on til I got there. I didn't look too close; the emergency services were there in force. My impression was that there were 3 cars in the smash - there seemed to be 3 damaged cars anyway. The road was still closed 3 or 4 hours later when I came back, so it must have been really bad. Thanks for the information. There always seem to be more accidents at Christmas - for obvious reasons - but this year I have seen 5 (fortunately none of the others as bad as this one). Other people I've spoken to have said something similar - I guess there is maybe even more stress around this year.

What time was this and whereabouts on Dartmouth road was it?

I live above a shop a couple of doors down from Boots. There was a less serious head-on collision outside my place about a year ago: more headlight to headlight and much lower speed. The road is too narrow to allow even two-wheels-on-pavement parking, but nobody seems to care about it.

I was on leave this day and also saw the aftermath only.

My guess due to the location is that the police car was heading down Dartmouth Road towards London Road, and crashed with a car leaving Derby Hill. This turning into the main road can be a little tricky sometimes as a speeding car on Dartmouth Road would appear quite suddenly from the sweeping bend by the swimming pool. Again, this is just my guess due to the location of the incident.

Roz, I notice that at no stage do you make mention of the car being chased and their driving standards.

According to a report in the local press the police car was on routine patrol.

I was told the police car was doing a u-turn.

When I saw it it the roof had been removed.

Someone was photographing the accident scene.