‘Happy to be alive’: Video shows truck sideswiping SUV, crashing on N.B. highway

An intense highway crash in New Brunswick was caught on dash cam video.

A New Brunswick woman says she’s “happy to be alive” after she was sideswiped by a tractor-trailer and forced into the median along a highway Thursday morning.

“Today I am still in shock that I am OK,” Lisa Pitt told CTV News. “It is by the grace of God that no one was killed.”

Pitt, who lives in Sussex, was heading to work in Saint John when the collision happened between Bloomfield and Hampton around 7:40 a.m.

Stunning video from her dashcam shows the Sunbury truck veering into her lane and colliding with her vehicle, which ends up in the median.

The truck is then seen driving through the median and over onto the other side of the highway, where it crashes into a sign and rolls onto its side.

“When I seen the transport hugging the line I started to move over towards the ditch, and then I knew he was not going to stop, I kept moving over,” recalls Pitt.

“I thought the trailers might run my SUV over, so when he hit the right side in my SUV, I just thought, I don’t know what to do, but held on tight in case my vehicle flipped.”

Pitt says she took some deep breaths, shut her car off, and then ran across the highway to see if she could help the truck driver, but he was too far off the road.

“I think it was about an hour and a bit, there were people that seemed to come from nowhere, trying to see if they could get to the driver, but there were trees, debris and the transport was on its side and leaking fluids, so it was not an easy task,” she says.

“There were a number of people at the scene that checked on me frequently. I don’t know who they were or where they came from because I was in a bit of shock, but there are wonderful people out there and I appreciate each of them.”

Crash caused by ‘medical incident’

Pitt stayed at the scene until the driver was loaded into the back of an ambulance and says he was responsive when she spoke to him.

An official from Sunbury Transport told her the driver had suffered a medical emergency before the crash, which she had already suspected since he failed to slow down after sideswiping her vehicle.

The New Brunswick RCMP confirmed to CTV News that the collision was caused by a “medical incident” and no charges will be laid.

Police said the truck driver was taken to hospital with minor injuries.

As for Pitt, she’s says she’s a bit stiff, but wasn’t injured in the crash. It appears her vehicle sustained minor damage, though it still has to be appraised.

“To look at it, you would never think a transport truck sideswiped me.”

Meanwhile, she’s disappointed to see people making accusations and assumptions about the driver online.

“I hate this for the driver, it was nothing more than an accident,” she says. “I am happy everyone is OK, and that is all that anyone should really comment on.”

CTV News reached out to Sunbury Transport for comment. The company would only confirm there was an accident involving a chip truck that was en route to Saint John from Sussex. It said the incident is under investigation.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Avery MacRae

For more New Brunswick news, visit our dedicated provincial page.