Rona Williams tells how she was swept along motorway for almost a minute before truck driver realised car was trapped

This article is more than 10 years old

This article is more than 10 years old

The driver of a car filmed being shunted sideways along a motorway under the front bumper of a tanker lorry at 60mph telephoned the emergency services and yelled: "I'm going to die", she has recalled.

The terrifying incident was filmed by a passenger in another car, and the footage has been watched by hundreds of thousands of people since it was uploaded on YouTube last week.

Rona Williams, a 31-year-old vet from York, said she had joined the A1(M) near Leeds when her Renault Clio was clipped by the lorry and spun around, ending up lodged beneath the bumper.

The truck driver, oblivious to what had happened, continued to drive at around 60mph.

"I just felt a knock and then I was travelling sideways, twisted 90 degrees clockwise," Williams told the Daily Mail.

She said she attempted to alert the driver by sounding her horn and flashing her hazard lights, but he appeared not to notice.

"I kept thinking: 'Nobody knows I'm here. Nobody has seen me,'" she said. "I tried everything.

"I was watching other cars, thinking: 'Help me, just help me,' but they didn't seem to be doing very much."

Williams then alerted the emergency services on her mobile phone. "I wasn't on hands-free, but I figured I wasn't really driving the car," she told the paper.

"I just screamed at the operator: 'I'm going to die, I'm going to die. Can you do something?'

"She tried to calm me down, but there wasn't really anything she could do at the end of the phone."

The ordeal lasted almost a minute before the lorry driver realised what had happened and stopped on the hard shoulder.

"He didn't seem overly concerned," she said. "He even asked if I thought he needed to hang around."

Williams said she was impressed that her "tough little car" had escaped with just a dented side panel and damaged tyres.

Arclid Transport, the owner of the lorry involved, and West Yorkshire police have both said they are looking into the incident.