NEWBURY, MASS. (WHDH) - A woman who narrowly avoided serious injury when a piece of concrete fell off a bridge and landed on her car while she was driving on I-95 in Newbury is sounding the alarm to make other drivers aware of what happened.
Barbara Hagerthy said she was driving with her boyfriend Sunday night, heading home to Maine after a concert in Boston, when something smashed into her cars windshield. They were not injured, but they had no clue what hit their car, or if someone was hurling objects from off the overpass.
“It sounded like a dead body dropping on your car,” Hagerthy said. “I mean, it was the loudest ‘Boom, thump!'”
They drove to the state police barracks in Newbury to alert troopers, who notified MassDOT.
“We are shattered and we are shaken. We knew we needed to pull over immediately and figure out what it was that hit us,” Hagerthy said. “It smashed the whole windshield, there was debris on the top of the car, you could see where the concrete had smashed the windshield wiper, it was a mess.”
Hagerthy said damage to her car is around $1,000, a cost MassDOT will cover. But she was anxious to speak out and alert other drivers to a hidden danger on the highways, and hoped what happened to her will not happen to anyone else.
She also said it will be a few more days before she returns to roads in the area.
“I still can’t believe what happened to us on the highway. I really hope they get somebody out there to take a look at it, and make sure other people are safe,” she said.
MassDOT did go inspect the bridge, state police said, though there was no update available at the time of reporting on what they found.
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