This dramatic footage shows a gran’s miracle escape after a car ploughed into her – but she walked away unhurt and went home to cook her husband’s tea.
Mum-of-three Helen Wilson was knocked off her feet and became sandwiched between two other vehicles – but only suffered ripped jeans.
She was struck as she got out of her vehicle outsider her mother’s house on Tuesday morning at 8:30am after a car lost control on black ice.
Miraculously while Helen’s car had its front end torn off the 63-year-old escaped with only bruising and a pair of torn trousers.
She walked away unhurt and, after a few routine checks at hospital, she was back home later that evening to make her hubbie’s dinner.
Describing the moment she was hurled to the ground by the moving car, Helen, from Bradford, West Yorks., said it was “surreal”.
She said: “I can’t believe what happened and how I got away with it. I must have a guardian angel.
“It was surreal. I’d called at my mum’s at 8.30am to pick her up to take her for a hospital appointment.
“The roads were really slippery and I sat for a few moments with my legs out of the car. When I got out I shut the door and was turning away, I heard this loud bang.
“I know it sounds stupid but I honestly thought it was me closing the car door loudly and then thought to myself, ‘why am I sitting on the ground?’
“The next thing was the female driver of the car that hit mine was crying and asking me if I was all right.
“Her two children were screaming in the back of her car. She was lovely and kept holding my hand but you could see she was traumatised.”
The mum-of-three and grandmother-of-one added: “My car was written off and I’ve been told the cost of the damage done to it is £7,500. It had no front end left – but it doesn’t matter about the car, you can replace cars not people.
“I’m amazed that all I got was bruising, though I did rip my best jeans. I’m a bit sore and stiff but amazingly I am alive.
“I was checked over at the hospital but I didn’t even need any X-rays.
“I have thought since that if I had still been sitting with my legs out of the car I may have lost them.”
Helen said her family was in shock after the incident and aid her 90-year-old mum has been worried because she was on her way to pick her up for a doctor’s appointment.
Helen, a Boots pharmacy technician, said: “I’m just grateful that it happened before I got my mum to the car for her appointment, which she had to miss.
“My other worry was that I’d have to miss my own knee operation.
“I am due to have a knee replacement on Monday. I’ve had one knee done and have been waiting for ages for this appointment. I thought to myself that it would have to be cancelled.
“Ironically, I have been off work for a while with high blood pressure and have been told to rest to lower it in time for the operation.
“I think this incident will have raised it a bit.”
Helen added: “I’m just bewildered how I wasn’t badly injured, or worse. People who have seen the CCTV footage are amazed. They keep hugging me.”
Helen’s husband 66-year-old Jack, a cash controller, was thrilled Helen escaped unhurt.
He said: “We did joke together that at least she was still able to make me my tea that night, but really it was a near thing.”
Tony Durkin was the neighbour whose CCTV caught the footage of the crash on Old Road, Horton Bank Top in Bradford, and said he thinks the street needs to be gritted.
He said: “Gritters used to come up and down here all the time, but not any more.
“It is not fair that we are not getting our roads gritted. It is so dangerous this morning.”
A spokesman for West Yorkshire Ambulance Service confirmed they had received a call to an injured woman in Old Road and they had transported her to Bradford Royal Infirmary with lower back pain.
A West Yorkshire Police spokesman said they had been alerted to the incident and that police had asked for gritters to be sent to grit the road.
A Bradford Council spokesman said Old Road had never been on the priority gritting list, but they had gritted it after a request from the police.
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