A South Australian driver got the fright of her life when a red-bellied black snake popped up from her bonnet during a highway drive yesterday.

Video posted to Mundoo Island Station's Facebook page shows the snake's head poking up between the moving vehicle's windscreen wipers, before the snake emerges further and looks around.

"Driving from Adelaide to Mundoo Island Station, 100km/h, with an hour still to drive, a snake popped up in front of me from under my bonnet. It scared the living daylights out of me!" the driver wrote .

"He stayed with us all the way and could not be coaxed out of the engine well.

"I have left my car in the middle of a paddock and hope that he finds his way out tonight.

"Petrified would sum up my nervous state for the hour I had to drive."

The quick-thinking driver also shut her car's vents and set the air-conditioning to recirculate in an attempt to block the snake from entering the inside of the car, she wrote on Facebook.

The snake was still inside the car about noon today, she added.