California Driver Miraculously Survives Plane Crash into Pickup Truck
A California driver, Dee Arata, 41, miraculously walked away nearly unscathed after a small plane crashed into her pickup truck on Tuesday morning.
Arata, a single mother and operating room nurse, was on her way to work from her Yuba City home when the single-engine Republic RC-3 failed to take off and crashed into her white pickup truck on a backroad around 6 a.m. The plane reportedly hit a fence before spiraling into her vehicle.
"I saw it before it hit, like, seconds, if that, it may have been one second," Arata told KCRA. "I saw something out of my peripheral vision, and it looked big and white, so I turned my head, and it was right there. And I knew it was a plane, and I said out loud, 'Oh God, I’m gonna get hit.'"
Firefighters explained that the crop-dusting plane didn't gain enough altitude during takeoff from a nearby runway, leading to the accident. Remarkably, neither the pilot nor Arata sustained serious injuries.
"I can’t believe I got hit by an airplane and survived," Arata said. Images from the scene show the truck's windshield shattered and the driver's side door mangled, while the plane landed several yards away in a field.
Arata, who usually avoids major roads to escape traffic, recounted, "I would rather take country roads and not worry about the traffic or some car crashing into me. I never once thought, 'You are going to have to worry about planes.'"
After the crash, Arata managed to get out of her truck with only a limp and even checked on the pilot before heading to the hospital. "He’s like, 'Are you OK?' And we hugged, you know," she recalled. "And he’s like, 'I’m so sorry,' and I was like that’s why it’s an accident. Accidents happen."
