An Auckland man narrowly escaped decapitation after his car was forced under the back of a truck.
Operations supervisor James Alexander, 27, said he emerged with "not even a scratch" after his car was hit from behind at 80kmh and "shunted" into the rubbish truck in front of him at around 8am Friday morning.
The back of the rubbish truck stopped about 30cm from Mr Alexander's face, he said. The incident occurred in Beachlands on Whitford-Maraetai Road near the intersection with Henson Road.
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Mr Alexander believes the driver behind him was distracted by the bright morning sunlight and didn't have time to stop when he returned his attention to the road.
"The first glimpse of sun nearly ended my life," Mr Alexander told Newshub.
He said he saw the man pull down his sun visor to protect his eyes from the glare, but when he returned his focus to the road, he was already heading straight into Mr Alexander's vehicle.
"He hit straight into the back of me," he said.
"I was still under the rubbish truck and I couldn't get out. He got out and was shaking and nearly in tears. He thought he had killed me."
While Mr Alexander escaped the incident unharmed, he said the driver of the vehicle that hit him was taken away in an ambulance because of a neck injury he sustained after his car's airbags went off.
The airbags in Mr Alexander's vehicle didn't go off because the truck impacted the top of his car's bonnet rather than hitting the car front on.
Emergency services were called to the scene just before 9am. Mr Alexander said emergency personnel told him he was lucky to be alive.
"It was peeling the front of my bonnet back like a tin can opener," he said, describing the truck's impact on his car.
After the crash he said his adrenaline was pumping, which distracted him from the significance of what had just happened. But after that he said it was "quite sobering to think that if my car was 10 inches lower my head could be gone," Mr Alexander said.
"When I got stuck under the truck the rubbish truck hadn't even noticed. He drove like two or three metres down the road with me dragged underneath him and I just screamed at the top of my lungs for him to stop."
Auckland Transport tweeted about the incident Friday morning warning drivers to consider using an alternative route and expect delays in the area.
Newshub.
