Driver walks away unharmed after car falls 30 feet off of Highland Park Bridge - "Straight from a movie."
An accident during rush hour traffic ended in a way that can only be described as unbelievable happened on Wednesday near the Highland Park Bridge.
First responders called the death-defying drop a "miracle" and it's something you might see in a movie: a car spins out of control, falls off of a ramp, and 30 feet down to the ground, but then the driver walks away and lives to tell the tale.
"It was completely unbelievable to us," said Captain Frank Bagnato of the Southern Allegheny Valley Emergency Service. "Like I said, straight from a movie, but all positive outcomes."
Bagnato was one of the first responders called to the scene shortly after 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday when his station got a call about a vehicle falling off of the ramp at the Highland Park exit.
According to witnesses, the driver was heading northbound when he lost control, flipped the vehicle multiple times, and then went over the side of the ramp.
Bagnato and his team arrived just a few minutes later and couldn't believe what they saw.
"We'd seen the car on all fours," he recalled. "Police were just seconds ahead of us, they were already talking to the people who were standing around, little did we know, one of the guys standing around with them was the driver of the vehicle."
Somehow, the vehicle landed in a parking lot on all four tires after falling more than 30 feet and the driver was able to get out and walk away.
"How is that even possible with a 30-40-foot fall from an overpass? We had a report that he rolled the vehicle a couple of times," Bagnato said. "We couldn't believe that he was just walking around like nothing happened. You would've thought he was a bystander."
The driver was taken to a nearby hospital but was soon released without any injuries. No passengers were in the car with him and nobody else was hurt.
It's an outcome that was the best in a bad situation.
"It's just one of those things where as bad as it was, everything happened the way it had to for a positive outcome," Bagnato said.
