TWO teenagers in a car suffered serious injuries when it crashed into the side of a jack-knifed lorry trailer on the M2 between Sittingbourne and Faversham in the early hours of Thursday morning.

The driver of the blue Vauxhall Corsa is a 19-year-old Sittingbourne man and his passenger is an 18-year-old Canterbury woman who were both taken to Medway Maritime Hospital in Gillingham.

Leading firefighter Stuart Beadle from Sittingbourne fire station said: "The trailer was right across the London-bound carriageway and the hard shoulder.

"The car was embedded under the trailer so we had to cut open the car door and part the trailer in order to get the man and woman out."

Fire Officer Peter Yarwood from Faversham attended the accident and helped cut the man and woman out of the car.

He said: "The police called us out at 3.36am after a small car travelling fast in poor visibility hit a jack-knifed articulated lorry which was blocking the whole carriageway. The car was practically sliced in half, it ran underneath the lorry's trailer and almost came out the other side.

"It took 10 firefighters two hours to rescue the young man and woman in the car, the man nearly died at the scene, they had quite serious spinal injuries."

The motorway was very icy at the time of the accident.