THE first person at the scene of a fatal crash on the A46 Evesham Bypass has described how he kept one driver talking while the emergency services arrived.

A Vauxhall Zafira crashed head-on with a small HGV at around 12.45am on Tuesday – killing the car’s driver, a man in his 40s.

Tom Playll was driving his class one lorry towards Tauton from Hinckley when he saw a lorry ahead flashing its hazard lights.

Assuming a car had broken down, the 28-year-old pulled up and got out of his lorry, wearing a hi-vis and carrying a torch and approached the scene.

He said the other lorry driver was getting out of his cabin slowly.

Mr Playll said: “The right side of the car was gone. I know my cars, but I didn’t know what that was anymore.

“It was pretty obvious from just seeing that that the driver was deceased.”

“I didn’t expect it. At first, I wasn’t quite sure what the car had hit into,” he said.

The other lorry driver, who had witnessed the crash and called for the emergency services, pointed him in the direction of a truck up on the grass verge.

Mr Playll said he found the truck driver conscious, though his head had initially gone through the windscreen.

He said the dashboard had come forward following the crash and had trapped the man’s legs.

Soon after, a police officer arrived and Mr Playll said he asked him to keep speaking to the injured truck driver.

“I was talking to him, telling him: ‘You’ve been in an accident’,” he said.

“I was quite worried, I knew he was an older gentleman. He was talking, asking ‘where are my glasses?’

“I’m the worst person at small talk,” said Mr Playll. “I told him your head’s gone through the windscreen. You look in there and I’ll have a look out here. That made him laugh.

“Then I thought he might’ve broken a rib, so laughing was the last thing he needed.”

Mr Playll said the lorry driver had been the only witness of the crash, and told him the car had been trying to overtake his lorry, with the truck coming the opposite way.

“Unfortunately, he paid with his life,” said Mr Playll, referring to the car’s driver.

He said the car was a big family-type car and at first, he was worried more people might have been there.

He counted 13 emergency vehicles “and more were coming” when he left the scene.

He told police he had not witnessed the incident and was able to turn his lorry around to free up the road and head towards Worcester.

A spokesman for West Midlands Ambulance service said the 61-year-old HGV driver remained trapped for 50 minutes and was taken to the major trauma centre at University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire.

Regarding the car driver, he said: “It quickly became apparent that there was nothing that could be done.”

Anyone who witnessed the collision is asked to call West Mercia Police on 101, quoting incident number 24 of August 21.