Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Terror on the tarmac
CAR CRASH BRITAIN – CAUGHT ON CAMERA
ITV, 9pm THIS is literally car crash television. You don’t really want to watch it, or certainly feel like you shouldn’t – but rubbernecking is inevitable. Millions of motorists have dash cams now, and so, along with bike helmet cameras, smartphones and CCTV, we get a pretty good picture of the drama on Britain’s roads. This series whizzes through endless footage of shocking accidents, terrible driving and miraculous near-misses. Your heart will be in your mouth for some of these quite frightening crashes, while other incidents will just have you shaking your head in disbelief about the idiocy of some drivers. “I must admit I thought I was dead,” says Iain Reid, whose car was hit by a lorry on the motorway while on a birthday outing for wife Tina. “I looked out of that window, saw the front grille of that truck and thought, ‘Today we die.’” He also describes how the force was so great that afterwards he realised his boxer shorts were full of broken glass from the passenger door window. Meanwhile, a witness describes the terror of seeing a woman in her car trapped between the barriers on a level crossing. At the last minute the barrier opens for her, but astonishingly a cyclist decides to nip across the track before the train comes whizzing past. A lorry driver tells how an 82-year-old driver smashed into his truck, which sent the car flying into someone’s front garden. And there’s the farmer chasing his runaway tractor across a field as horses leap out of the way. Watch out also for the man whose parallel parking technique is like something out of a James Bond movie.