CAUGHT ON CAMERA: Harrowing Crash Sends SUV Tumbling Past Truck Scales
SOLANO COUNTY (CBS13) — A routine day at a California Highway Patrol weigh station in Fairfield, almost turned deadly.
A gray SUV traveling on eastbound Interstate 80 somehow lost control and tumbled into the scale facility, missing traffic. The female driver inside miraculously walked away.
The incident happened last month, but the video was just released.
First responders are calling it a miracle.
Incredible video captured by CHP cameras shows a gray SUV dodging two cars on the freeway, going airborne, then rolling over to a stop, inside a CHP weigh station.
The SUV landed right side up, and moments later, you see two truck drivers jumping in to help the woman inside.
CHP officer Ralph Caggiano watched the whole thing from his desk.
"I thought there's no way; there's got to be some injuries," said the officer.
Caggiano ran outside to see the woman already out of her car.
"When I first talked to her, I said hey let's try not to move around so much, don't move your neck let me check things out. This was a surprise for me to see her walk out completely uninjured," he added.
The driver told Caggiano she was being tailgated on I-80, so she sped up to get out of the way, and lost control. Paramedics who arrived on-scene say they couldn't believe the driver walked away.
"We took a look at the car, and it was one of those 'how the heck did they survive?'" said Cordelia Fire Capt. Billy Untalan.
If the trucks at the scales had been a few hundred feet ahead, that driver could have lost her life.
"The roof was caved-in to mid seat, doors were crushed in, engine was nonsalvageable—it was scrap metal after that," Untalan said.
A crash most drivers wouldn't survive, luck was on this driver's side.
"That's just the cards they were dealt and I guess they bluffed their way through that one."
