A Fife mum has spoken of the terrifying moment a large piece of wood flew off a van and into the path of her car.
Dramatic footage shows the 8ft x 4ft piece of building material slide off the vehicle’s roof, narrowly missing Claire Naylor’s windscreen just before 1.30pm on Saturday.
Claire, who was travelling with her children in the car, says she was left trembling after the shock incident.
Relief as family narrowly avoid tragedy
Though nobody was hurt, the car has been written off after the piece of wood slammed into the front of it.
Police are investigating and hope to identify the driver of the van, which was carrying a trailer.
Claire, who lives in Kirkcaldy, said: “As the van got closer I suddenly noticed the wood coming off.
“It would 100% have gone through the windscreen if I hadn’t managed to break sharply.
“It could have been a whole lot worse for me and my kids. All I’ve kept imagining is what if the worse had happened.
“I was a trembling mess afterwards.”
Car ‘absolutely annihilated’
Claire’s daughters aged 10 and 12 and her stepdaughter, 10, and stepdaughter’s sister, 12, were all passengers in the car.
Luckily none suffered any injuries but all were shaken up afterwards.
The 28-year-old added: “I couldn’t stop straight away because there are so many accidents on the Standing Stane Road and I just didn’t feel safe.
“I managed to pull over after a while and phone my partner John and then took everyone home.
“I didn’t see whether the driver of the van stopped but apparently another driver spoke to him further up the road afterwards.
“Hopefully the police can track him down.”
Claire’s partner John Phimster, who was not in the vehicle at the time, added: “The car is absolutely annihilated.
“It just shows the force that was involved. They would have been dead if it had hit the windscreen.
“We’ve been really lucky.”
A Police Scotland spokesperson said: “We received a report of a car struck by an item falling from another vehicle on Standing Stane Road near Leven around 2.20pm on Saturday.
“The incident happened a short time earlier and enquiries are ongoing.”
