‘People just aren’t safe’: Survivor of tree falling accident makes passionate plea for roadside tree clearing
Image: Nine News
A woman who miraculously survived after a tree crushed her car last week has thanked those who helped her, and called for dangerous trees to be removed along the roadside.
Phillipa Eckhardt and her ten-year-old daughter Charlotte are lucky to be alive after a tree fell on their car in Belgrave last Tuesday.
Both mother and daughter sustained broken bones in the accident, but are expected to make a full recovery.
Philippa was driving to drop Charlotte off at school when the tree fell.
“We were just driving on the normal morning school run … heard a crack and before I could even register in my mind that it was a tree cracking; bam! This crash. It was instantaneous,” she told 3AW’s Neil Mitchell.
“I remember smashing my head really hard into the steering wheel and then being thrown back. It’s all really foggy after that.
“Before, I think, either one of us could register what had happened there were already people outside of the car.”
The Dandenong Ranges mother said she was fearful of falling trees prior to the accident, as she regularly drives along the same stretch of road where a man and his ten-year-old son were killed in July.
“For the last month, every time I drove that road all I could think about was, ‘when’s the next tree going to come down?,” she said.
Philippa called for trees to be cleared along the roadside.
“There needs to be, maybe, a corridor along the edge of the road where those trees are just taken out,” she said.
“For a lot of people those roads aren’t an optional drive, it’s the only way to get from point A to point B.
“People just aren’t safe.
“They should have been taken down ages ago.”
Four Victorians have been killed by falling trees in just over a month.
Press PLAY below for more.