A 29 year old Hungarian woman is in intensive care with fractured bones after falling 23 feet off a chairlift onto the windshield and hood of a passing car at Stuhleck Ski Resort in Austria as reported by The Local AT. As bad as that sounds, the car is thought to have broken her fall which would have been straight to pavement if not for lucky timing.
The woman’s husband also fell from the chairlift but he was thankfully caught by a safety net. The cause of the fall the is not yet clear, but it is known the couple raised the safety bar of the chairlift after leaving the loading station.
The driver of the car is a regular at the mountain and was heading up for a day of skiing. He had this to say about the impact:
“Incredibly loud – I was terrified. Thousands of glass fragments were in my car, my hands were bleeding, who knows what could have happened!”
He went on to say that the net they have is insufficient and should extend across the road:
“Imagine a child fell out of the lift, or that the woman had landed on a pedestrian, or directly onto the street! Someone could have died – and I could have died too.”
The woman was wearing a helmet which is also thought to have saved her life.
