The family of a teenager say he was inches from being killed when a car ploughed through the front of their shop.

Student Mohammad Abbas, 17, was working in his dad’s blinds shop in Thornton Road, Bradford, yesterday when a Vauxhall Zafira came crashing through the front window.

A shaken Mr Abbas, who was showered with broken glass and toppling window displays, said: “It might sound crazy, but it is like my whole life flashed before me. It was horrific.”

He added: “A minute earlier, I saw a couple of little kids running past. They definitely would have been killed.”

His father Mohammad Shafiq, 43, who was around the side of the shop when the incident happened, said he could not bear to think of the worst-case scenario.

He added: “My son was in the shop. He has had a lucky escape. If he was at the front of the shop, who knows what could have happened.”

The silver Zafira had been in a collision with a blue Vauxhall Corsa seconds before it hit the shop, near the busy Four Lane Ends junction, at 12.20pm.

Mr Abbas said he was standing behind the counter in the shop playing on his phone when he heard the initial bang of the vehicles colliding.

As he came round the front of the counter to investigate, the car hit the buliding, smashing the window.

“The car came right for me,” said Mr Abbas. “I fell back and the shop front came straight into my lap.

“It’s a really bad start to my new year – it has put me off working in the shop.”

Mr Saddiq said business would be affected as a result of the incident.

“Customers cannot go in there,” he said. “It will maybe be closed for a week or two. We have just had a revamp and reorganised the shop getting ready for the new year. We were looking forward to getting busy again after Christmas and now this has happened.”

The driver of the Corsa, a 24-year-old man, sustained severe neck and back pain and was taken to Bradford Royal Infirmary. The driver of the Zafira, a 53-year-old man, was uninjured.The accident caused traffic disruption.