Picture this: You’re standing on the street watching a car go flying down the road towards a bus. As you wait for the car to slam on its brakes, it instead goes airborne, crashing into the bus so hard that it almost comes out the other side.
No, this isn’t the scene from Michael Bay’s latest action movie, but instead a terrifying moment that played out on the streets of Brisbane, Australia, where a driver sped through an intersection before flying into the air and becoming stuck inside a public bus, according to news.com.au.
Fortunately, there were no passengers on the bus at the time of the crash. However, that doesn’t mean that there were no losses during the crash, as both the bus and the Yaris are likely going to be totaled after this incident.
Now, 7News Australia has an update on the accident from the people who were standing on the other side of the bus at the time of impact.
The Driver Was Trying to Avoid Another Vehicle When the Crash Happened
According to news.com.au, the Yaris had been driving in the outer lane near the intersection of Beaudesert Rd and Granard Rd when a black SsangYong tried to merge from the center lane. The Yaris swerved around the SsangYong to avoid it, losing control of the vehicle and crashing into the bus.
Unbelievably enough, the Yaris driver survived the wreck, but she needed to be taken to the hospital to be evaluated for shock after being removed from the wreckage.
“The driver of the bus, a 66-year-old Sunnybank Hills man, did not sustain any serious injuries,” a Queensland police spokesperson told the publication.
The News Called the Crash the “Escape of the Century”
7News Australia interviewed two people who were standing on the other side of the bus when the accident happened. The young man described the noise as an explosion in the interview, telling the reporter, “That could’ve been me if that bus wasn’t there.”
According to the reporter, the young man wasn’t the only one who got lucky that night, since the intersection is typically busy, especially at around 6:30 p.m. when the accident happened. Local officials also remarked how surprising it was that nobody got hurt, since the bus had only just dropped its last passenger off 20 minutes prior, and was heading back to the depot.
People Had a Lot to Say About the Crash on Social Media
Commenters on the 7News Australia Facebook post about the accident were pretty glib, likely because nobody was actually injured in the scary crash.
“The one time you wanted to miss the bus,” one person wrote.
“When you can’t decide whether to drive or get the bus,” a second person added.
Another person found the crash’s optics funny, given how the bus appeared in photos and videos. “The ‘sorry not in service’ sign on the bus makes it funnier,” they wrote.
While we can all have a good laugh about this now that we know nobody was seriously hurt, it is worth taking a minute to realize how quickly a perfectly normal evening could turn to tragedy under the right conditions.