Car Goes Airborne, Lands On Top Of Bridge In Arlington
ARLINGTON (CBS) - It's an accident even veteran officers say they've never seen before. When they came upon the scene on the Pleasant Street overpass that crosses Route 2 in Arlington they found two mangled cars and scattered tree branches.
They believe a Ford Fiesta driven by a 77-year-old man from Cambridge suddenly left the highway and barreled up an embankment, crashing through some trees, a guardrail, becoming airborne, and landing upside down on the hood of a Honda Civic.
That driver was on the overpass waiting to make a turn at a red light when she tells police the car came out of nowhere. "The woman says the only way to describe it is the car literally landed on top of her car. If it had been five or six feet either way, they would have been crushed with no hope for either one of them," said Sgt. Bryan Gallagher of the Arlington Police Department.
Incredibly, the male driver who flew through the air suffered serious but non-life threatening injuries, and crews had to free him from his crushed vehicle. The unsuspecting female driver on the receiving end, a 20-year-old woman from Winchester, received only minor injuries.
"By the look of the car crash and the circumstances it's amazing they're both alive," said Sgt. Gallagher. So amazing it's an accident that crews can barely reconstruct.
Sgt. Gallagher says the priority was to make sure the drivers were transported to local hospitals to be checked out, but the questions will certainly come later.
"The way the car traveled and the distance it landed is something you don't seen often," he said.