A dad-of-two was lucky to escape alive after his car was crushed in half in a motorway pile-up.

Jacques Hemming was on his way home to Sittingbourne when he was caught up in a horrific eight-vehicle crash on the M20.

Miraculously, the 33-year-old software engineer walked away relatively unscathed from the crumpled Mazda2.

And fortunately his wife and two children, aged two and nine months, were not travelling with him at the time.

He was driving home from work in Kings Hill on November 13, when a lorry "slammed into him from behind" just before 5pm.

A pile-up involving multiple cars then followed, blocking the coastbound carriageway of the motorway for several hours between junction 5 for Aylesford and junction 7 for Maidstone.

Mr Hemming, of Greenlees Close, Sittingbourne, has no recollection of the event, which saw him treated overnight at William Harvey Hospital in Ashford for concussion and a sore neck and ribs.

His wife, Tannice, 33, with whom he has two-year-old daughter, Sienna, and nine-month-old son, Rousseau, said: "We’ve just been to the yard on Monday to see the car and it’s absolutely horrendous.

"It’s incredible that no one was seriously hurt. Jacques didn’t really have any reaction until he saw the car this week, he doesn’t remember anything about the crash at all.

"We’re just really grateful our kids weren’t in the back of the car at the time.

"My husband had to extricate his coat from the back seat - if anybody had been in the back, there’s no chance they would have survived."

It emerged earlier this year there were nearly 50 accidents in just one month on another stretch of the M20, near Ashford, which has been narrowed to two lanes to allow roadworks to take place.

Highways England faced calls to review its management of the works but bosses insisted none of the serious incidents were caused by the design of the traffic management road layout.