State Route 123 in Hancock was closed for over an hour Thursday evening due to a motor vehicle accident about a mile north of Hancock village.
New Hampshire State Police and the Hancock Fire Department responded to the call.
According to Hancock Fire Chief Tom Bates, a driver operating a pickup truck went off the road and hit rocks and a tree, totaling his vehicle. He was not seriously injured.
Witnesses to the crash say it was not speed-related.
“It was just one of those freak things,” Bates said. “The guy driving down the road, just coming home from work with a friend following him, and he veered off the road and hit the rocks and kind of ended on the other side of the rocks and hit a tree.”
Bates said the truck was totaled.
“The front end was smashed, and there was a lot of front-end damage,” Bates said.
Other drivers stopped to assist the victim and helped stop the bleeding from a wound on his head.
“Other than minor injuries, the driver was fine. He was able to self-extricate from the crash and he was just sitting on the rocks waiting when we arrived. He was able to crawl out on his own,” Bates said
The driver was transported to Monadnock Community Hospital with minor injuries.
Bates said Route 123 was closed for about half an hour initially when the fire department arrived to assess the scene, and was later closed again for over an hour after the tow truck arrived.
“The driver was very fortunate. If the truck had landed just a few feet farther in another direction, it would have gone way down in the gully and could have been a lot worse,” Bates said.
Bates said that because of the location of the crash, drivers had to be routed “way out of their way.”
“With that section of road, there is really just no other way to get around there, and we had to turn people around,” Bates said. “It’s not often we have to close that road or have so much happening there. We had fire trucks, ambulance, and state police going up 123 and I’m sure everyone was wondering what was going on, but fortunately, it was not a bad accident.”