Eyewitness recalls moment Boston commuter train 'obliterated' truck

By RYAN GORMAN

A truck driver is lucky to be alive after a Boston commuter train slammed into his big rig only seconds after he jumped to safety.

The MBTA Purple Line train hit the 18-wheeler around 1:00 p.m. just outside Braintree Station, a spokesperson for the transit agency told AOL News. Remarkably, only one person was injured.

Brian Bucannon, 44, saw the wreck unfold from across the street.

"It was the most unbelievable thing," he told AOL News.

Bucannon was moving snow at a nearby property when he saw the truck get stuck while exiting a warehouse, he recalled.

"It looked like he was trying to make the turn ... got a little too cute [and] got hung up on a snow bank," said Bucannon, of nearby Hanson.

The truck began maneuvering off the tracks when a train's horn could soon be heard off in the distance.

"Oh s**t, he's right in line of the train," said Bucannon, adding that the man jumped out of the truck just seconds before impact.

"The train didn't slow up ... it absolutely obliterated the truck," he continued. "I was so much in awe."

The train hit the front of the tractor-trailer's cab, "a direct hit," according to Bucannon. "The train buckled, I thought for sure it was coming off the tracks."

The commuter train did not derail, but it did push the truck about 60-feet down the track, according to the shocked man.

The trailer was somehow not destroyed, but "the truck itself is gone, you couldn't tell what it was," said Bucannon, who also was sure that the train's conductor "has to have been injured."

According to the MBTA, the train's crew made it out unscathed. A single passenger, out of the roughly 80 onboard, was taken to a nearby hospital with back pain.

The train has since been cleared out of the area and service has resumed, according to the transit agency.

This incident had a far happier ending than a similar crash Tuesday night in suburban Westchester County, just outside of New York City.

Six people were killed when a Metro-North commuter train struck an SUV just outside the town of Valhalla.

Terrified passengers evacuated the train as it burst into flames. They waded into knee-deep snow while waiting for emergency responders to douse the blaze.

Separate investigations into both incidents remain ongoing.