REMOVAL man Tom Hynes lost both his family cars in a bizarre crash after he left them parked outside his York home.
Shoppers watched aghast as a car flew into the air after hitting a road hump in a residential area of Acomb and smashed into three parked vehicles.
Two of the cars belonging to the Hynes family were written off in the dramatic incident in Foxwood Lane.
Strangely, though, a third car parked between them escaped virtually undamaged despite being shunted about eight feet along the road.
Mr Hynes, of Foxwood Lane, said: "A car hit a speed bump at such speed that it actually left the road. When it landed, it bounced sideways on to two wheels and careered across the road - into our Volvo."
Mr Hynes' wrecked Volvo pushed an Escort parked next to it into his family's other car, a Metro, destroying that as well.
Amazingly, the Escort, belonging to a gas repair man, was parked so close to the Volvo that it managed to escape serious damage, said Mr Hynes.
The driver of the crash car was taken to York District Hospital suffering from minor injuries.
Mr Hynes said: "It is unbelievable that both our cars were ruined in the space of two seconds." Neither car was fully insured.
Mr Hynes said: "My wife is a home-care assistant and needs her car to drive to appointments. She does about 10 or 20 a day. I don't know what we are going to do.
"The gas repair man had been at the boot of his car getting a torch just three minutes before the crash. He would have lost both legs, without a shadow of a doubt, if he had still been there."
A man was arrested and police said he would be charged with driving offences.
Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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