A motorist has described how he looked over to see his wife "covered in blood" after a bucket-sized piece of concrete was dropped on to their vehicle from a bridge.
Steve and Carol Manley were driving home after visiting some friends when the missile was launched from a bridge on the A12 in Essex, leaving Mrs Manley with fractures to her face and ribs, and internal injuries.
"There was a bump on the roof of the car, as far as I could tell," her husband said.
"I thought I had hit something in the road. When I turned around and looked at my wife to ask her what it was, I noticed that the front of the car was destroyed. My wife was covered in blood. There was a concrete block on her chest and leg."
Mr Manley said his 57-year-old wife had only recently left hospital following an operation on her stomach, where the concrete block landed. "My first reaction was to try and get the concrete block off of my wife," he told a press conference.
"The concerns that were running through my mind were that my wife couldn't breathe, she couldn't see, there was blood pouring from her face. I was concerned because she had an operation on a spinal injury about two or three years ago.
"Only recently (she had) come out of hospital from having an operation on her stomach and the concrete block was on the stomach so you can understand I was in no state to know anything or do anything."
Mr Manley said he had been driving at about 45mph and enjoying a "quiet conversation" with his wife when the block hit their vehicle at 10.05pm last Thursday. He escaped with minor cuts and bruises.
His wife is now recovering from her ordeal at Broomfield Hospital, in Chelmsford, Essex.
The pair were hit just 40 minutes after mother-of-two Lisa Horne, 26, escaped unharmed when a rock the size of a football smashed on to her windscreen. The 26-year-old was driving under another bridge with her 48-year-old mother Stella on the same road when their Vauxhall Astra was struck.