A man was cut out of a car following a two-car crash on the A228 this morning.

The head-on smash happened shortly before 7.30am and brought the road to a standstill.

One car involved ended up crashing into a garden wall and the other ended up in another garden on its driveway.

Fire crews removed the roof and doors of one of the cars to help free the man who was trapped inside.

The man, thought to have been a retired ambulance driver himself, was trapped in his vehicle as it was embedded in the garden wall.

It took 40 minutes to cut the man out of the black Nissan and he was transferred to a longboard and then taken into the care of paramedics and taken to hospital.

Another younger man in the other vehicle was able to get out of his car, a black Ford Focus, before the emergency services arrived.

His car ended up in the next door garden after apparently hitting a tree.

One woman, who ended up with the Nissan embedded in her wall, but didn't want to be named, said: "We didn't hear a thing, but came out afterwards when we realised something had happened.

"The older guy was trapped in his car, he was given oxygen in the car and they put back plates round him, he was totally caged in. It took the crews 40 minutes to get him out.

"They sprung into action as soon as the arrived on the scene, they never stopped until he was out.

He was conscious and has now been taken away in the ambulance.

"The recovery trucks are now here clearing the vehicles but the whole thing brought the road to a complete standstill."

Hassen Oomar, who works at Cuxton Auto Services, said a car had come off the road on a bend.

He said: “You couldn’t tell what sort of car it was, you could just see the tail of the car.

The house is down a dip. They took a long time to get the people out. There were long delays but things are moving now.”

Mihaela Nisnistor, landlady of White Hart in Rochester Road, said: "The traffic was really bad.

"It had been queuing for at least a couple of hours.