A Tayside mum said she can’t believe her family are still alive following a spectacular Angus road crash.
The Arbuckle family were left hanging upside down after their Land Rover ended up in a ditch after skidding on black ice and flipping on to its roof.
Anne Arbuckle, 35 and husband Michael, 36, walked away with minor injuries while children Sophie, 3, and Ellie, 1, were miraculously unscathed.
“I feel like a cat with nine lives,” said Mrs Arbuckle from Dundee.
“I can’t believe we are all alive.”
The car’s SOS system called the emergency services when the air bags deployed.
Mr Arbuckle managed to pull his family to safety through the boot as the couple feared the car would catch fire.
Emergency services attended the one-vehicle incident which took place shortly after 5.20pm on Tuesday on the B961 near Carmyllie.
Mrs Arbuckle, who works in Dundee as a solicitor, said the family were visiting a friend at a farm in the village.
“I had felt ill on the drive up so I said I would drive home which I wish I hadn’t,” she said.
“We came out of the cottage and I decided to go cross-country because it is quicker so I did that as usual.
“We knew it was frosty and we approached a bend at about 20-25mph but as I went to turn the car just didn’t respond and started to slide across the road.
“I hit the brakes and it became clear that we were not going to stay on the road.
“There was a big fence post and Mike said we were going to hit it and I thought we were going to damage the car — not realising that there was also a ditch there.
“We hit the fence post and kept going and rolled into the ditch — we went over once and there was a really loud bang.
“Then I was upside down in the car and the airbags had gone off.”
Mrs Arbuckle said the family’s Land Rover Discovery Sport ultimately saved their bacon as it had an SOS system which called the emergency services.
“That’s something we would have been unable to do as my daughter had been playing with my phone in the back seat and it was lost,” she said.
“I didn’t realise that when airbags go off there’s an explosive that sets them off so there was a smell of smoke.
“I was absolutely terrified that the car was going to go on fire and we couldn’t get out.”
Mrs Arbuckle said the boot popped open and her husband managed to get free and pull the family to safety.
She said she was extremely grateful to the emergency services who were very sympathetic toward her children who were “absolutely frightened”.
She said Sophie and Ellie managed to escape completely unscathed which emphasised the importance of car seats and children being strapped in properly.
Mrs Arbuckle said the accident has also changed her driving habits and she’ll from now on take a longer route on main roads which are more likely to be gritted than B-roads which are often given a lower priority.
