A MOTHER of three was feared dead after being flung into the air when a car crashed in the driveway of her home.

Police said 55-year-old Thomas Banks had apparently been driving his Ford Sierra around a Nelson housing estate when he lost control on a right hand bend in Oxford Road at 9.30pm on Saturday.

The car left the road and went into a private driveway where it collided with a Ford Mondeo estate which in turn struck Linda Anderson, sending her flying through the air.

Her partner Brian Nutter-Knight, 62, of Tavistock Street, Nelson, had just parked the and was showing Linda cleaning equipment in the boot when the accident happened.He said: "I could hear a car coming along the road and then I heard the brakes and the screech of tyres.

"As I turned to look Linda was at the side of me.

"The car went straight into the side of my car causing it to lift up in the air and knocking it into next door's driveway.

"I turned round to see Linda and she was nowhere to be seen then I saw her about nine feet away, face down, and I thought she was dead.

"Then I heard her say, 'Brian' and I went to her side while the paramedics arrived." Brian escaped unhurt and although Linda had been knocked into in the air she escaped with cuts and bruises to her face, hands and upper body and has had eight stitches to a cut on her face.

Brian said: "I am a bus driver and I have never been so close to an accident in my life.

"I can't believe we both survived it."

He said it could have been much worse because usually when he arrived at Linda's home her children Ashley, 12, Adam, ten and six-year-old Amanda come out to meet him and surrounded the car.

They were watching TV when the accident happened but they are all been shocked and upset because they saw the aftermath of the collision.

Brain said: "All I could smell was burning rubber from the tyres and there are long skid marks on the road.

"If the neighbours had not been out Linda would have been flung straight into the back of their car."

Mrs Anderson, 33, of Oxford Road, is in a "comfortable" condition in Burnley General Hospital today.

Mr Banks and his front seat passenger Karen Vardy, 42, who suffered facial cuts and bruises, both of Coppice Close, off Oxford Road, were allowed home from hospital after treatment.

Police closed the road for an hour while they investigated the accident.