A family had a lucky escape after a lump of metal came flying through their car windscreen, narrowly missing a five-year-old boy.

It happened on the M20, between Junction 8 for Leeds Castle and junction 9 for Ashford, at around 11am when the debris was thrown from a trailer which had just lost a wheel.

Fortunately nobody was seriously injured.

Marcus Leathwood, 42, had been taking his wife and young son on a half-term trip to Hythe when the accident happened.

He said: "The object travelled across two lanes of the motorway, hit our windscreen, hit the driver's seat and missed our son's seat by inches before ending up in the footwell.

"Amazingly there were no injuries, just lots of glass and scratches."

"We got onto the hard shoulder. The police and AA were all amazing.

"We felt shocked but very lucky. You can't do anything when something hits you at 60/70mph so it was split second luck. If I had swerved it would have hurt one of us or worse."