Danny Critchely, 32, believes he was lucky to survive the dramatic near miss as guttering pipes flew off a van on the opposite carriageway
A DRIVER narrowly avoided being skewered on the M6 motorway as plastic guttering pipes flies off a van on the opposite carriageway and smashes into his car.
Danny Critchely, 32, believes he was lucky to survive the dramatic near miss — which echoed the grisly and elaborate sequence of deaths in the Final Destination horror film franchise.
Lorry driver Danny captured his brush with death on his car's dashboard camera as he headed to work near his home in Wigan at 9.30am on March 4.
The married dad-of-two said: "I was on the M6 heading north near junction 25. I was in lane two and the van was in the middle lane too on the opposite carriageway.
"The load must have flown about 20 metres, it just took off. Some of it was in my natural blind spot as well so I couldn't see where it was.
"It made me jump and I think I swore, but I didn't know what had hit me, it happened really quickly.
"I was worried because there were other cars next to and behind me that I thought could have got hit too, and they could have side-swiped me trying to avoid hitting the load.
"Looking back it could have been a lot worse. When I watched the video back it made me jump and I thought, 'what the heck was that?'
"It's only when you slow the footage right down that you can see how far it flies.
"The guttering doesn't look very heavy, but when it's travelling that fast it can do some damage.
"I wasn't driving too fast so luckily I could deal with it too."
Danny, a lorry driver for 20 years, added: "You'd be surprised how often it does happen.
"I've seen a brick pallet nearly slide off the back of a lorry and called up the company to let them know that the driver needed to stop and secure them again.
"It's very common to see ladders in the road that have fallen off vans I think a lot of company drivers are under pressure to get to jobs quickly and perhaps don't spend as long as they should making sure their load is secure.
"In this case it seems to have been a builder on his own, perhaps an independent roofer or something.
"Just secure your load. The best thing was that no harm was done, I suppose. Just a builder left scratching his head saying, 'did we load the guttering?'."
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