A BRADFORD grandma has spoken of her ‘miraculous’ escape after coming inches from death outside her mother’s home.

Helen Wilson was knocked off her feet by a driver who is thought to have lost control on black ice on Tuesday morning.

And while Mrs Wilson’s car had its front end torn off in the impact, she escaped the collision with bruising and ripped jeans.

Despite being whisked off to hospital for checks, she was still able to get home in time to make her husband Jack’s tea.

Mrs Wilson, a pharmacy technician with Boots, in Great Horton, said she can’t watch the CCTV footage captured by a resident showing her being swept off her feet and almost sandwiched between the two cars.

“I can’t believe what happened and how I got away with it. I must have a guardian angel.”

The footage shows Mrs Wilson getting out of her car and closing the door in Old Road, Horton Bank Top. A split second later she is being hurled to the ground and her car is knocked from view by the force.

“It was surreal,” she said. “I’d called at my mum’s at 8.30am to pick her up to take her for a hospital appointment.

“The roads were really slippery and I sat for a few moments with my legs out of the car. When I got out I shut the door and was turning away when I heard this loud bang.

CCTV by T&A reader Jack Holdsworth

“I thought it was me closing the car door loudly and then thought to myself, why am I sitting on the ground?

“The next thing was the female driver of the car that hit mine was crying and asking me if I was all right. Her two children were screaming in the back of her car. My car was written off and I’ve been told the cost of the damage done to it is £7,500. It had no front end left.

“I’m amazed that all I got was bruising, though I did rip my best jeans. I’m a bit sore and stiff but amazingly I am alive.

“I was checked over at the hospital but I didn’t even need any X-rays.

“I have thought since that if I had still been sitting with my legs out of the car I may have lost them.”

She said she was also grateful that it happened before she had got her 90-year-old mum into the car to take her to an appointment, which she had to miss.

Mrs Wilson, 63, who lives in Wellfield Gardens, West Scholes, said apart from being upset at ripping her best jeans, her main worry was potentially missing an operation.

“I am due to have a knee replacement on Monday. I’ve had one knee done and have been waiting for ages for this appointment. I thought to myself, oh no, it will have to be cancelled.

“Ironically, I have been off work for a while with high blood pressure and have been told to rest to lower it in time for the operation. I think this incident will have raised it a bit,” she said.

“My mum has been crying saying it was her fault because I was at her house to collect her.

“I’m just bewildered how I wasn’t badly injured, or worse. People who have seen the CCTV footage are amazed. They keep hugging me.”

Friend Lynne Mitchell said: “It’s a miracle she’s still with us. Everyone is amazed and saying what a lucky escape she had. We’re all just glad she’s okay. I think we’ll go out and buy a Lottery ticket now.”

Husband Jack, a cash collector for the Telegraph & Argus, said she was lucky. “We did joke together that at least she was still able to make me my tea that night, but really it was a near thing.”

A spokesman for West Yorkshire Ambulance Service confirmed they had received a call to an injured woman in Old Road and they had transported her to Bradford Royal Infirmary with lower back pain.

A West Yorkshire Police spokesman said they had been alerted to the incident and that police had asked for gritters to be sent to grit the road.

Tony Durkin, a neighbour whose CCTV camera caught the footage said after the crash on Tuesday: “Gritters used to come up and down here all the time, but not any more. It is not fair that we are not getting our roads gritted. It is so dangerous this morning.”

A Bradford Council spokesman said Old Road had never been on the priority gritting list, but they had gritted it after a request from the police.

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