Two New Jersey women are miraculously alive after their SUV drove off a highway snowbank, plummeted sixty feet and landed upright on the ground below, The Record reported.
Elizabeth Wolthoff, 23, and a passenger were headed east on the Hackensack River Bridge on Route 80 when another car cut her off, causing her to swerve and hit a snowbank on Friday, Hackensack Police Director Michael Mordaga told the newspaper.
Mordaga said the snowbank served as a "ramp," sending the car flying off the bridge and down 60 feet where it landed on a fence and tree- just a few feet away from the Hackensack River. The snowbank was created by snow that was plowed up against the bridge's guardrail.
Hackensack firefighters received a call about the accident and raced to the scene, hoping the car wasn't submerged in the water.
But they arrived to find Wolthoff and her passenger, 25-year-old Rebecca Winslow, relatively unscathed.
"It's just shocking that you could fall that far in a car and be awake when everybody gets there, telling us what hurts," firefighter Michael Thomasey told The Record.
It took rescuers 20 minutes to free the women from the crushed vehicle. Firefighters used the "Jaws of Life" and pried the passenger-side door off first to free Winslow and then again on the car roof to free Wolthoff, who was stuck underneath the steering wheel where most of the damage was.
Both victims complained of neck and back pain but other than that, their injuries were minor, police told the newspaper. They were treated at Hackensack University Medical Center.
State police are now investigating the cause of the accident.
