News

Close call: Tire falls off truck, careens into woman's windshield on 128

LEXINGTON, Mass. — When you’re going 60 miles per hour along the highway, you don’t have a lot of time to react. You can imagine how scary it is to see an object as large as a tire, flying right towards you.

That was exactly what happened to a young woman driving along Route 128 in Lexington Wednesday morning when a truck tire came loose and smashed right into her windshield.

"I’m lucky i made it okay," Samantha Vengels told Boston 25 News. "It was unexpected."

She didn’t have much time to think about it. She just ducked her head and hoped for the best.

"There was glass everywhere. It was just really bad," Vengels, who happens to be hearing-impaired, said.

She was traveling along 128 in Lexington When the tire from a landscaping truck came flying off and smashed into her windshield. The tire skipped off the top of her Jeep. Incredibly, no one was hurt and Vengels walked away.

"I'm okay, no scratches, no bruises, nothing. So I really just feel fortunate," she said.

If you take a look inside the Jeep, you get a better sense at how dangerous this situation was. The windshield did hold up pretty well, but the dashboard is covered in broken glass.

The truck is owned by Greener Group, a landscaping company in Lowell. Boston 25 News made repeated attempts to contact the owners of that company about their truck. An employee inside their office told us there was no one who could speak to us.

Vengels said the Greener Group hasn’t said anything to her. She’s just thankful she’s able to tell her story.

"I keep telling myself that there were definitely angels up there watching over me, because it could have been so much worse," she said.

State police told us the crash is still under investigation. No charges had been filed at the time of this posting.