Police have praised a Chippenham driver who crashed through a bridge wall at Ratford last night to avoid on-coming traffic.

The man in his 20s driving a truck ended upside down in the river after crashing on the single track road which leads to Bremhill at around 5pm.

He was lucky to escape with a few cuts and bruises.

Police, who closed the Calne A4 road at the turning to Ratford for several hours, said his quick-thinking prevented anyone else from being involved in the accident.

Calne PCSO Mark Cook said: “I shot out of Calne Police Station and thankfully he was out of the vehicle, but we didn’t know that at the time.

"Apart from minor cuts and bruises he was uninjured.

“It’s a little single track road, but it’s quite a busy road because it’s used as a cut through for vehicles coming from Chippenham to Calne.

“He was coming down the hill, he applied his brakes but they wouldn’t respond.

"He veered left because there was an oncoming vehicle and as he went left he went too far and hit the bridge.

“It was the lesser of two evils. It was either hit the oncoming vehicle or go left.

"If his brakes were working then he would have been fine. Speed wasn’t a factor in this.

“Due to the driver’s quick thinking, anyone else was prevented from being involved in a collision.”

Firefighters from Calne went into the river wearing wetsuits and used hay bales provided by local farmers to stop oil and diesel leaking into the river.

PCSO Cook said: “Somehow they managed to get the vehicle out, heaven knows how.

"They may have righted the vehicle on its wheels and dragged it up stream, because there were overhead power cables they couldn’t lift it up.”

Do you know who was driving the truck? Email news@gazetteandherald.co.uk or call 01225 773637