A newlywed couple on their "pre-honeymoon" narrowly escaped being impaled by metal debris left on the southbound lanes of I-95 in South Florida.
Sateena Spates was driving a Range Rover with her husband Carlton Francis Jr. in the passenger seat Tuesday morning when a metal rod flew up from the interstate near Stirling Road in Broward County.
The metal rod sliced right through their windshield, reports the Miami Herald, but lucky for the passengers, the debris pierced the space between them, missing each by inches.
"It sounded like an explosion," Francis told Local 10.
"I braced myself, and I just hoped for the best," said Francis. "When I got out of the car and looked at it, I cried. I cried... My life flashed before my eyes."
“They’re extremely lucky that it didn’t come straight at them with enough of an angle that it came across the front of the windshield,” Florida Highway Patrol Sgt. Mark Wysocky told CBS Miami.
Both Sandy and Carlton were transported to Memorial Regional Hospital and treated for minor scratches from the glass breaking.
In addition to road rage, reckless driving, and speeding, debris is all too common a problem on South Florida highways.
In a worst-case-scenario back in 1998, a 13-year-old girl was impaled mere centimeters from her heart by a 1 1/2-foot-long shaft that flew through the windshield just north of Sunrise Boulevard on I-95.