Man survives by 'inch' after car crushed    

[June 14, 2007]  NEW YORK (AP) -- It was a brush with death that still has Lance Aaron shuddering. The 60-year-old Brooklyn man was driving home when a 40-foot-long container flew off a flatbed truck and fell on top of his moving car, crushing it. He survived with just minor injuries.

"The damn thing fell right on me," said Aaron, who was driving on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway Tuesday when the freakish accident occurred.

"I escaped death by an inch and I'm still shook up thinking about it. I guess it wasn't my time to die," he told the Daily News in Wednesday editions.

His 2007 Pontiac G5 was crushed, except -- miraculously -- for a narrow section running the length of the car on the driver's side. Aaron had no passengers.

"It came down at an angle, crushed the roof and sliced through the car from right to left," Aaron said. "If anyone else was in the car, they would have been crushed or decapitated."

Aaron escaped with a bump to the head and a small cut on one finger.

The container was ripped from its chains and off the truck after hitting an overpass in the right lane of the expressway. Aaron was driving behind it in the middle lane, the fire department said.

"It happened so fast there was no time to avoid it, nowhere to go," Aaron told the News.

The occupants of the truck ran back and pulled Aaron out through the car window. Police said they were not charged.

[Associated Press]