Police, fire crews, paramedics, and an air ambulance were called to the crash on the A23 near Broadfield when a BMW, an Astra, and a lorry collided yesterday morning.

The two drivers, and a passenger in the BMW, were freed from the vehicles by firefighters using heavy cutting gear.

Bob Legg, 57, who was driving the lorry and called in paramedics following the smash, said: "When I went out I was expecting the worst.
"The damage was all there to see, you knew there'd be injuries but I didn't know how bad. They were lucky."

The crash on the southbound lane closed the road between the Cheals and Southgate roundabouts for more than an hour and a half.

"The door was open and the lady was lying there and I was just tending to her.

"There were two people in the other car but they seemed like they weren't too badly injured."

An ambulance spokesman said a woman in her 50s was taken to hospital with a head injury and neck pain, a man in his 30s with a shoulder injury, and a woman in her 30s with minor injuries.

Katie Brown, 16, from Broadfield, arrived on the scene shortly after the crash and said: "It just looked terrible, we just couldn't believe how bad it was. I could hear them cutting the car open, it was a horrible noise."

Green Watch Commander Simon Le-Galloudec said: "We were dispatched to an RTC involving two vehicles reported as persons trapped."

"There were medical entrapments in both vehicles. It was a question of creating space within the vehicle to extricate them."

"The patients were then removed on spinal boards."
l You can see a video report by visiting www.crawleyobserver.co.uk