A LORRY driver who escaped from the mangled wreck of his HGV after it careered down a 25ft embankment, today said it was just not his time to die.A battered and bruised Adrian Carter, of Oak Hill Lane, Ipswich, pulled himself through a window of his destroyed truck seconds after it crashed off the A14 at Barham.

A LORRY driver who escaped from the mangled wreck of his HGV after it careered down a 25ft embankment, today said it was just not his time to die.

A battered and bruised Adrian Carter, of Oak Hill Lane, Ipswich, pulled himself through a window of his destroyed truck seconds after it crashed off the A14 at Barham.

"To survive an accident like that the only thing you can put it down to is sheer luck and your number hasn't been called," Mr Carter, 53, said.

"I've come off lightly. I walked away from it so that's all you can ask for.

"It's like any accident if your number is up you're a gonner. My number obviously wasn't up."

Mr Carter, a lorry driver with 32 years experience who runs AC Freight, was travelling along the Stowmarket-bound carriageway of the A14 at about 5am on Friday when his lorry was in collision with a Ford Transit near the Claydon turn-off.

The driver of the Ford escaped without injury but Mr Carter's vehicle left the road and rolled down the nearby embankment.

Today Mr Carter revealed witnesses to the accident thought he was dead after seeing his mangled vehicle lying on its roof.

"There were three people there. They thought I was dead, but it's not surprising," he said.

"Until you saw the caption on the photograph (in Friday's Evening Star) you would have thought the driver was dead."

Mr Carter had been taking a consignment from Felixstowe to Northampton when the accident happened.

He was taken to hospital suffering cuts and bruises to his head and was kept under observation for more than nine hours.

The section of the A14 was closed for nearly five hours to allow for the recovery of the lorry, which was only 19 months old.

Mr Carter was unaware of the full extent of the massive damage to his lorry until he viewed the wreckage at a recovery yard at Eye on Saturday .

"It's a complete wreck," he said.

"When something like that happens it happens so quickly the airbag goes off and you can't see anything," he said.

"You don't think about anything. When you realise what's happening you go into survival mode and say to yourself 'get out, get out'."