What happens when you start driving with the crook lock still on? Well you might end up upside down listening to the Archers...

Margaret - still in one piece

Picture the scene: It's early evening and already dark. Margaret lives in a country lane and the nearest lamp-post is a distance away. So when she climbed into the car to drive to a meeting, she couldn’t see that the crook-lock was still on position. She turned on the ignition and set off.

The car was heading downhill and towards a grassy bank, but Margaret could neither brake nor steer. She says it felt like everything was happening in slow motion. She thought the car would eventually stop, but instead the car kept on going up the bank until it turned over on its roof. Margaret was left, as she describes it, ‘hanging upside down in her seatbelt in a car with a squashed roof listening to The Archers’. She couldn't get the seatbelt undone and began to shout for help. But she was very calm because she wasn’t in any pain, and just needed someone to find her and get her out.

driving with the steering locked!

Margaret’s teenage daughters had, unbeknown to her, followed her out of the house, intending to walk to the village. They saw what happened, thought they could smell petrol and had visions of the car exploding (too many action movies?). They rushed into the house and phoned 999.

In the meantime though, her husband came to her rescue and released her from her captivity. Back at the house rinsing her hands, a couple of paramedic rushed into her room. This did rather surprise her. The next thing she knew, the police arrived along with four ambulances.

Margaret found out later that all three emergency services had been despatched, and because Margaret’s house was not easy to find they had been tearing round the village sirens wailing and blue lights flashing. There was a pensioners’ meeting that evening in the village, so lots of people saw the car - upside down - blocking the road. Margaret felt very silly indeed.

The car, was her husband’s company car and was totally written off. Her husband was great about it though, telling her that ‘the main thing is that you’re okay, the car’s only a lump of metal’ to which Margaret replied ‘it is now!’.