The worst crashes ever seen at the Tour de France

CARS slamming riders into barbed wire fences and dogs strolling in front of the peloton are among the worst crashes seen at the Tour de France.

Britain's sprinter Mark Cavendish grimaces after he crashed in the last kilometers of the first stage of the Tour de France cycling race over 190.5 kilometers (118.4 miles) with start in Leeds and finish in Harrogate, England, Saturday, July 5, 2014. (AP Photo/Fred Mons, Pool)

SHORTS destroyed, legs shredded and lucky to be alive, Johnny Hoogerland is proof that anything can happen in the Tour de France.

Seasoned viewers thought they’d seen it all at sport’s biggest rolling circus before the 2011 Tour.

But no one could have envisaged a situation in which a French TV network car could accelerate in order to get ahead of a small breakaway group, then cut in and clean up the riders, sending some crashing into the bitumen and Hoogerland hurtling over an embankment and into a barbed wire fence.

Hoogerland’s shocking crash was just one of hundreds, if not thousands, in the Tour’s century-long history, with Mark Cavendish’s race-ending prang in the Stage 1 sprint this year the latest catastrophic

WATCH MORE OF THE TOUR’S WORST CRASHES IN THE VIDEO ABOVE.

Johnny Hoogerland sustained horrific leg injuries after crashing into a barbed wire fence.