Trapped beneath the grille of a heavy truck, a small red city car was dragged for hundreds of meters toward a highway toll plaza. The scene could easily have turned into a tragedy. On Tuesday afternoon, September 15, 2026, an 83‑year‑old man behind the wheel of a Peugeot 205 found himself being pulled along by a large truck for nearly 300 meters in Castelsarrasin, in the Tarn‑et‑Garonne department of southern France. The octogenarian driver survived the ordeal, albeit shaken, after an incident that raises as many questions as it does leave one in awe.
Everything began with a minor collision at a roundabout near the A62 highway and ended at the automatic barriers of the Castelsarrasin toll plaza, mere inches from a potential catastrophe. In between, the truck driver felt resistance, heard a persistent mechanical noise, and attributed those signs to a blown tire or a localized failure of his own vehicle, unaware that he was pushing a light car in front of his bumper. He continued his course toward the toll booths, covering roughly 300 meters with the Peugeot wedged across his front, leaving the elderly motorist at the mercy of the truck’s mass. This sequence is enough to send a shiver through every driver who frequents this stretch of Castelsarrasin and to raise a simple, unsettling question: how could such a scenario unfold without anyone being seriously hurt?
At the Artel roundabout, the Peugeot 205 ends up trapped under the truck
The incident unfolded at the Artel roundabout, at the entrance to Castelsarrasin and the interchange that leads to the A62. There, the bright red Peugeot 205 belonging to the octogenarian was struck or hooked by a heavy truck. In the impact, the car was dragged sideways by the steel behemoth, wedged beneath the truck’s grille and across the roadway. From that moment on, the combined weight of the truck and the compact car rolled away from the roundabout toward the toll access, as if it were an ordinary convoy proceeding toward the toll plaza.
Behind the wheel in the truck’s elevated cab, the driver could tell something was off. He felt an unusual resistance and heard a continuous mechanical clatter, but he attributed these signals to a blown tire or a mechanical fault somewhere on his own rig. He did not suspect that he was pushing a light vehicle pinned in front of his bumper. He kept moving toward the toll booths, toting the 205 diagonally beneath his front end, and he carried the octogenarian into danger without realizing it.
A motorist alerts the trucker at the Castelsarrasin toll and averts disaster
The story had the potential to take a far worse turn if the truck had accelerated on the highway with the car jammed under its airdam. Then another motorist, witnessing this unusual convoy, intervened. The bystander overtook the truck just before the toll barrier and frantically signaled to the truck driver, drawing his attention to the trapped car ahead. The truck finally halted near a toll cabin, revealing the Peugeot twisted and deformed, its hood raised, a door crushed, stopped only a few centimeters from the automatic barriers—a margin that underscored just how close the collision could have ended in catastrophe.
The alert was logged around 2:20 p.m. Firefighters from Castelsarrasin-Moissac were quickly dispatched and attended to the 83-year-old driver for a comprehensive medical evaluation. Although visibly shaken, the octogenarian had narrowly escaped the worst, having traveled hundreds of meters beneath the weight of the truck. Around the scene, teams from the South of France Motorway company, the gendarmerie, the national police, and the municipal police secured the approaches to the interchange to prevent further incidents and to begin initial investigations. Officials have not yet released formal conclusions from the inquiry, but this extraordinary collision serves as a stark reminder to all road users of how precarious the coexistence of light vehicles and heavy trucks can be as one approaches roundabouts and toll plazas.
