On Friday morning, while scouting possible locations for a bike path, London’s mayor, Boris Johnson, narrowly avoided being killed when a passing truck crashed into a parked car and knocked it across the road he was cycling on, missing him by only a few feet.

As a report in The Wharf, a newspaper that covers the London neighborhood of Canary Wharf where Mr. Johnson and his small pack of cyclists were riding at the time of the accident, noted: “The entire incident was captured on a private security camera monitoring the Dunbar Wharf development on Narrow Street.” Here is the security camera footage, which shows the accident, and Mr. Johnson emerging from behind the truck about 30 seconds later, holding his helmet in one hand as he inspects the damage:

At the time of the accident, Mr. Johnson was riding with a group of cyclists that included his director of transport, Kulveer Ranger, and Britain’s transport minister, Lord Adonis. The Guardian’s Toby Helm reports that they were looking at “potential sites for new cycle ‘super highways.'”

A cyclist who had tagged along with the group posted photos of the aftermath of the accident on Flickr, where he goes by the name Beatnic, along with this explanation:

It was very odd. The mayor and an entourage – about 10 cyclists or so – were looking at options for a new cycle route – as a curious fellow cyclist I tagged along as I was on my way in to work in Canary Wharf following the same route. The back doors of the lorry flew open as it overtook us and the bolt on the right-hand door picked up a parked car through its front windscreen and swung it round at head-height, brushing past a few of the cyclists and then landing it back on all four wheels a little further down the road. It was very noisy and yes, it did all seem to happen in slow motion. It’s a miracle no-one was seriously injured.

In an interview with the Web site BikeRader.com in January, Mr. Johnson explained that London was “in the process of identifying routes for 12 cycle super highways, which will span across London and greatly increase the infrastructure for cyclists.”