Brittany Savage says she every time she gets behind the wheel of a vehicle now, she feels blessed.
“I got a second chance at life and all I can feel is thankful,” she told CTV News Ottawa.
The 27-year-old Brockville resident was involved in a head-on collision with an out-of-control transport truck on Highway 401 Monday, Jan. 26.
Miraculously, she was able to walk away from the crash uninjured.
“The best way I know how to explain it is snow plowing upward at monster heights towards me diagonally.”
Savage works as a realtor and was on her way to a home inspection in Mallorytown that Monday morning. Eastern Ontario had just been blasted with its latest snowstorm the day before.
She said getting on the highway in Brockville, the roadways were generally clean and considered a plowed highway would be safer than an unplowed backroad.
“Once [the transport truck] got onto the pavement is when I realized that it was a truck. I think I might have seen either the head of the truck or maybe the tail end spinning towards me.”
It was then that Savage, westbound on the 401, crashed her mother’s Chevy Blazer into the roof of the eastbound truck, which had overturned onto its passenger side and slid across the large, grassy highway median.
“I knew this was either going to be it or He (God) was about to perform a miracle,” she said.
“Next thing I know, I hit. It was hard. Huge impact. But I’m alive. I can breathe, I can see, my ears are ringing, but I know I can hear.”
Savage says the overturned transport blocked both lanes of the westbound highway and that there was nothing she could have done to avoid it.
Almost immediately after hitting the truck, Savage was then rear-ended by another vehicle. After that, she says she realized she had to get out of the road.
“I looked to my left. I opened my door. There couldn’t have been more than a foot of opening for me to get out. I saw that there was another transport coming up behind me, and I didn’t know if he could slow down. I didn’t know what that was going to bring, so I ran out of the car into the median to get away from traffic.”
Savage says her car hit the hollow roof of the truck’s cab, softening the impact.
“There were too many factors for that to come together the way it did to just call it luck,” she said.
Savage credits her faith in a higher power for allowing her to walk away that day.
“God saved my life. It was God. He placed me in that transport, in the cab of the transport. Perfectly.”
The driver of the transport truck was also able to walk away from the crash, according to Savage.
“He had a little bit of blood on the tip of his nose that I saw. He had said his back hurt, but he was walking just like I was. He was able to talk. His movement seemed fine.”
Adding to the miracle, Savage says the truck turning onto its passenger side is what saved the driver, as her Chevy plowed through the truck roof and into the passenger seat.
Inspecting the transport after the crash, she said it appeared the driver’s seat remained intact.
“The only thing that was untouched was his driver’s seat where he was sitting. That’s it. The passenger side was completely manipulated.”
Savage says following the crash, other drivers stopped to check on her, with one person asking if she was okay and then hugging her.
She said the embrace could only be described as an angel, heaven sent.
“I turned to him, and I said, God saved my life. And he said, yes, He did.”
OPP say no charges have been laid against the transport driver in the incident at this time, with an investigation on going.
“That area has a lake effect where the conditions can worsen quite quickly. We can get whiteout conditions as well as very icy roads,” describes OPP East Region Sergeant Erin Cranton.
“Ultimately to walk away from something like that, the short of it is, it’s a miracle.
