couchtripper

Rescue workers said a woman was 'lucky to be alive' after her car was pinned under a lorry and dragged hundreds of yards down a motorway. The blue Renault Clio collided with a lorry on the northbound carriageway of the M6 in Staffordshire, between junctions 15 and 16. Emergency crews found the car wedged under the lorry's trailer and said it may have travelled a 'few hundred yards' down the carriageway.

Despite being trapped in the flattened car, the woman in her 20s was pulled out of the wreckage by firefighters. Amazingly, she escaped with minor scratches and did not even need hospital treatment after the incident on Friday morning.

West Midlands Ambulance crews said she had a 'miraculous escape'. A spokesman said: 'This was a serious collision but amazingly the young lady walked away uninjured. She did not even need to be taken to hospital she is lucky to be alive. The crash could have been so much worse, it is a minor miracle that no one was injured - not even the other driver.

'Considering the damage to the vehicle and the circumstances of the crash, the woman is extremely fortunate not to have suffered more serious injuries. The pictures show you just how bad the crash was. It was a very miraculous escape.'

The lorry driver was not injured in the crash.

That's a huge pile of lucky there!

The base of a crane, weighing a massive 146 tonnes, fell off the back of a flatbed truck en route to the Airbus base near Hamburg early Thursday morning. The accident caused considerable damage to the road and destroying the vehicle escorting it, but no-one was injured. The accident took place at 1:54 am in the Finkenwerder area of the northern German city. The road has now been completely blocked off and an assessment is underway to determine how the incident happened.

“It is possible that the safety straps securing the load in place were not functioning correctly,” a police spokesman from the Hamburg police told The Local. “Other possible theories we are looking into are tiredness, which may have caused the driver to overshoot a corner.”

The driver of the transporter vehicle was reportedly turning the truck slowly when the flatbed area reared, causing the giant crane foot to slide off onto the road, which suffered massive surface damage. The equipment also fell onto the car accompanying it. The driver “was incredibly lucky,” said police spokesman said. “He escaped completely unhurt.”

Clearance of the accident scene is underway, and three cranes are being used to lift the damaged equipment. The crane foot will be taken by a new truck to the Airbus base, where it will be thoroughly examined before being used again.

A cargo ship has smashed through a US bridge after being too tall to go under it, leaving a 300ft gap in the structure. The vessel took a large amount of asphalt and metal with it which was left on the ship's bow as it destroyed two sections of the bridge.

At the time, four cars were on the structure, that normally carries about 2,800 vehicles a day. There were also 20 workers on the 300ft-long Delta Mariner that was transporting rocket equipment. But no one was hurt in the incident in Benton, Kentucky.

Emergency services and officials rushed to the scene to assess the damage on the Eggner Ferry Bridge. Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear said: "We are grateful that this wreck caused no injuries or loss of life. Since that bridge carries 2,800 cars every day, we were very fortunate that no one was on the span at that time. We'll turn our attention to a full inspection of the bridge and determine what steps we can take next to speed up the replacement of that important artery."

STOCKHOLM — A man was pulled alive from a snowed-in car on a deserted forest road in northern Sweden where he had been stranded and without food for at least two months in freezing temperatures, police said Saturday.

"We received word yesterday (Friday) that a person had been found in a snow-covered car deep in the woods, more than 1.5 kilometres from the main road," Ebbe Nyberg, a duty officer in the northern Vaesterbotten county, told AFP.

A man on a snowscooter had noticed the top of the car on the deserted and snowfilled forest road, not far from the northern town of Umeaa, just south of the Arctic Circle, and after clearing off some of the snow had peered inside. "He saw movement and realized there was probably a person in there and called the police," Nyberg said, adding that rescue services and an ambulance that had been belted to drive on the snow had rushed to the scene.

They were amazed at what they found: A man in his mid-40s huddled inside in a sleeping bag "in really bad shape," starving and barely able to move or speak. Nyberg said it was unclear exactly how long the man, who is from the central Swedish town of Oerebro, had been stuck, but pointed out that the car must have been driven to the deserted spot "before it began snowing in the autumn."

"He says himself he has been without food since December, so we think he must have got there around then, or perhaps earlier, in November," he said, pointing out that temperatures in the area have recently plunged as low as minus 30 degrees Celsius. It's just amazing he's alive!"

The man, who had not been reported missing and who has yet to say how he got stuck, appeared to have survived on nothing but snow since mid-December. After his rescue, he was rushed to the Norrlands University Hospital, said Nyberg, who could provide no details on his condition.

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A truck driver in Norway has had a lucky escape after he survived a 200ft drop down a snow-covered cliff. His lorry did not have the right winter tread tyres and was stuck on an icy road. It was being towed off the mountain pass north of Oslo by a large rescue tow truck when the accident occurred.

The incident was filmed by a passenger in a car travelling behind the two vehicles. The lorry driver was struggling to steer his vehicle as it slid on ice and sideswiped a guard rail. Moments later, both vehicles crashed through the fence and plunged down the cliff. The driver of the tow truck managed to jump clear after he sensed the towed lorry was sliding out of control.

The vehicles rolled multiple times in the accident near Leirfjord, around 560 miles from the capital. Remarkably, the driver of the stranded truck is in stable condition in hospital - he suffered several bone fractures in the accident.

A 53-year-old man has survived being struck by lightning in the scrotum while walking down a street in Madrid. According to Spain's El Mondo newspaper, the unnamed man lost consciousness after being struck by lightning in the groin on Thursday night, with the bolt travelling down his leg and striking the ground.

His son called paramedics who later treated him for burns to the scrotum and feet at the scene in Madrid's suburb Tres Cantos. He was then taken to Madrid’s Hospital de la Paz where tests showed his heart and brain functions were not affected by the lightning strike. The man is said to be in a stable condition in hospital.

A Russian man found himself stranded in the middle of a forest in sub-zero conditions for over a month after storming out of the house following an argument with his wife over her cooking.

Yuri Ticuic must have wished he hadn't bothered bringing it up at all after complaining to his wife after she served him up a bowl of cold soup. And his wife must have feared he had left her for good after he failed to return for over a month having inadvertently walked deep into the heart of a dense woodland.

The 69-year-old quickly found himself stranded in the bitter cold, unable to find a way back to his house in Altai, Russia. 'I walked and walked but after a few hours I didn't have any idea where I was and I couldn't find my way back,' Mr Ticuic explained to the local media. I thought I was going to die. The temperatures were sub-zero and I was getting really weak.'

Having turned his nose up at his wife's bowl of soup, the pensioner was forced to survive for weeks on a diet of berries and forest leaves. He was eventually found frostbitten and close to death by farm workers who then raised the alarm. 'One day I heard voices and saw some farm workers. I called them and they managed to get me to hospital,' he explained. Mr Ticuic has insisted he has learnt his lesson from the incident, saying: 'No matter what happens, that's the last time I criticise my wife's cooking. Anything is better than hay grain.'

Doctors say he is lucky to be alive, but fear they may have to amputate his legs. 'They are severely damaged from frostbite and it may not be possible to save them,' said a hospital spokesman.

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I've always said it's better to be legless than deid...

A Russian man's plan to escape having an argument his girlfriend turned out to be a bit rubbish after he became stuck in a garbage chute. Emergency services had to be called to rescue the unidentified man following his desperate attempt to flee from this partner.

Residents in an apartment block in Tyumen, Siberia, heard the 31-year-old's screams after he became trapped in the ultra-tight space. The tenant plummeted three floors after jumping down the rubbish chute from his apartment on the eighth floor of the tower block. His cries of help prompted the arrival of local emergency services who proceeded to cut him free from his strange predicament.

'According to the 31-year-old victim, he jumped into the metal chute on the eighth floor to escape his girlfriend,' a local emergency service's statement read. Very little detail has been released about the incident and it is, as of yet, unclear what drove the man to jump down the chute. Fire services were called out to deal with a similarly bizarre incident in the same city a few years ago.