Trucker Relives 'Miracle' Escape From Crash That Left His Trailer Hanging Over Interstate Bridge

“I was thinking it was maybe going to fall off, but luckily it didn’t," truck driver Kostas Hobitakis said after his semi ended up hanging on an overpass in Pennsylvania

A truck driver said he's "grateful to be alive" after losing control of his truck, which went barrelling across a Pennsylvania interstate before dangling haphazardly along an overpass in South Strabane Township, according to several news sites.

Kostas Hobitakis, 37, told Pittsburgh news station WXPI, "I rolled it for a long time, I was thinking it was maybe going to fall off, but luckily it didn't."

Video taken above the Interstate 79 overpass after 3:45 p.m. on Apr. 12 showed the large green semi-truck on its side with the back half of the tractor trailer dangling over the edge, its wheels turned up. The trailer dangled about five stories above ground, WXPI reported.

The truck didn't fall completely off the bridge, but part of the trailer fell apart and some of its cargo, more than 40,000 lbs. of cardboard, fell onto another freeway below, per The Washington Post.

"So, after it was done [rolling] I just thought, 'Quickly, get out of here.' I was hanging, I unbuckled it and just fell to the floor," Hobitakis told WXPI. "There was no way I could reach the top door, bottom door, the only thing was the windshield, so I rammed into it a couple times and got out."

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Hobitakis, a Chicago native who had been driving trucks for three years, said that he escaped with only some scrapes and an elbow injury from trying to escape the overturned vehicle, per the Post.

He told the paper he had been en route to deliver 20 tons of cardboard from Fairmont, W.Va., to Wisconsin Rapids, Wis., and had been 60 miles into the journey when he tried to slow down the vehicle, which instead veered left. He said he tried hitting the pedal breaks, but ultimately lost control of the truck.

Pennsylvania State Police cited him for speeding and driving outside of his lane, according to the publication. However, Hobitakis insisted that he had been following the rules.

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"I was going the speed limit," Hobitakis told WXPI. "In my head as this was happening, as I was coming down the hill, I am slowing down. The load was really heavy. Coming down that specific bridge if you cross the line over, it goes downward, so the thing is, my tire went into that and you just get sucked in."

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He told the news station that he believed "a miracle" saved him.

"I have on my dash Jesus, Mary and the saints, and then when they lifted up the truck, under all the rubble between the truck and the rubble, was my baptismal saint and icon, not scratched, not nothing," he said. "To me, He protected me from not going over."

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