Employees have raised concerns about the safety of the junction their bakery is built on after a car ploughed through metal railings and careered into its front window.

Following the incident on Saturday, January 30, Coughlans Bakery staff said “it was only a matter of time” before a crash like this would happen.

A blue Ford Focus smashed into the front door of the bakery, located on the corner of London Road and Mayday Road, at 5.39am.

SATURDAY: Car ploughs through railings before smashing into bakery in early-morning crash

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Nobody was harmed in the crash, and no one was inside the shop at the time, but the damage to the bakery’s frontage has temporarily “decimated” the business, its director said.

The bakery only opened three and a half hours after its usual opening time at 7am.

The company’s director Sean Coughlan, 45, said: “It’s a bloody miracle that nobody was killed because there is often a fair few people walking around at that time in the morning.

“The fact no one was hurt is the most important thing, but from a business point of view it has completely decimated sales. We’ve lost about 50 per cent of our customers in the past two days.”

“It was just bizarre to come down and find the shop like this. I have no idea how the driver managed to end up with his car in the window. It’s really frustrating to have to deal with this.”

The 45-year-old said he was woken up in the early hours of Saturday morning by a phone call from the company’s alarm operators – who told him to get the shop as quickly as possible.

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Beth Allen, 50, who works in the Coughlans, said she regularly sees near misses and minor incidents happening outside the shop.

She said: “It’s almost every day that I see near misses or incidents. I’ve seen cyclists crash into cars and come flying off in the past.

“I was only a matter of time before something like this happened. Let’s just hope it doesn’t happen again.

“Something needs to be done. We don’t want someone dying out there. There needs to be a stop light at the very least.”

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Stephanie Wright, store manager, said: “The front doors had to be completely removed and now there’s no railing to protect us.

“We all expected something like this to happen eventually – it was only a matter of time.

“Thankfully no one was hurt, and that’s the main thing, but something needs to happen safety wise or it’ll happen again and could be worse.”

Police are treating the crash as a damage-only collision and the driver of the car has not been arrested.

A Croydon Council spokeswoman said the authority will await the outcome the police investigation into the crash before making any decisions on changes to the junction.

She added: “Following the road traffic collision our officers attended the scene to clear up and make the area safe.

“Permanent repairs to the railings and the pavement will begin in the coming days.”

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