A MOTORIST had a lucky escape when she lost control and smashed into a shop.

The woman, in her early 20s, was driving a blue Peugeot 106 along Union Road, Oswaldtwistle, towards Accrington, when she mounted the pavement and careered around 50 yards into the side of Equine Direct yesterday afternoon.

The crumpled car bounced off a parked Vauxhall Corsa and wedged between a postbox and the shop front.

Shop assistant Tash Trezise, 19, had been in the back of the store with a customer and described the impact as ‘like a bomb going off’.

When she ran to the front of the shop she saw smoke and fluid coming from the car, which she thought was blood, and rang 999.

Shop owners Neil Floyd, 40, and his wife Pam, 35, said the smash had moved the structure of the shop by more than two inches.

Council building inspectors deemed it unsafe and closed the road until 8pm while scaffolding was put up to support it.

The driver, from Accrington, was checked at the scene but was unharmed.

Police said she hadn’t committed any offence.

Pam said: “In the five years we’ve had the shop there’s been a number of accidents.

“The force of the crash shook the shop’s foundations and cracked a pillar.

“I cannot believe she walked away from it. It is just fortunate that nobody was walking out of the paper shop or the salon at that point or they would’ve been killed.”

Pam said the shop would continue to trade as normal.

A spokesman for Hyndburn Fire Service said: “The road surface was very greasy.

"I don’t know if that was just rain or if there had been a leak.

"She had come round the corner, skidded off the road and mounted the pavement.

"It doesn’t seem as though she was speeding.”