A number of drivers on Auckland's Whangaparaoa Peninsula are lucky to have avoided a runaway truck and trailer that flew across a busy four-lane road on Friday, leaving a trail of destruction.
The unit was parked at the BP service station when the brakes failed and it careered across the Hibiscus Coast highway, and miraculously didn't hit anyone.
It eventually crashed into a tyre shop at the bottom of a hill in the back of a Silverdale tyre shop. Workers were cleaning up the mess on Saturday.
Tyre Corp staff member Phil Waitoa says it sounded like a bomb going off.
"If it wasn't for [one] container... it would have been a whole different story. It would have gone straight through this building and [another] building."
The truck narrowly missed one driver - Joan - whose car was within centimetres of the careening vehicle.
"I think I went blank actually. I was so petrified," she says.
"Suddenly I was faced with this truck that was just looming towards me, I think he just about knocked me off I would have thought."
Tyre Corp owner Grant Ogilvie says it's the fifth time a vehicle has smashed into the shop in the last 18 years.
Insurance will cover the estimated $200,000-worth of damage from what's proving to be a costly sloping hill.
Central Trucking told Newshub the truck passed its Certificate of Fitness three weeks ago and they're looking into what went wrong.
Tens of thousands of vehicles travel up and down the Hibiscus Coast highway every day.
Newshub.
