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A West Island couple say they’re lucky to be alive after a piece of roadbed from Highway 13 smashed into their car windshield while they were approaching underneath on Highway 40 on Thursday evening.

“Just as we approached the 13, there was a piece of concrete that looked like a meteor that came flying at us at an angle,” said Dan Cholewa, who was driving the car, a Volvo, with his wife, Hillary Cohen, to attend a gala downtown. They had reached St-Laurent borough when the slab crashed down.

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“It just literally exploded in our face and it hit our windshield,” Cholewa said. “It ricocheted off our windshield and then hit the windshield again. It sounded like a bomb went off.”

Cholewa says he kept driving. “My gut just said ‘Keep the car in line.’ And I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt, so I didn’t want to swerve, I didn’t want to cause an accident or for something to happen to anyone else.”

The Sûreté du Québec officer who took Cholewa’s report the next day told him police were aware of the situation because they had received around a dozen 911 calls about flying concrete, Cholewa said.

The officer said pieces of roadbed on the 13 were being launched off the highway because trucks driving through a pothole at high speed had broken it apart, Cholewa said. Mercifully, the couple’s two young children weren’t in the car with them, he said.

Cohen was doing her makeup in the vanity mirror on the passenger side when the slab hit the windshield, Cholewa said. The rearview mirror and an accident-detection camera system attached to the front were knocked off and hit Cohen in the head, he said.

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They stopped the car once they arrived downtown, Cholewa said. Shock took over, he said. After losing his father suddenly six months ago, Cholewa said Thursday’s accident “was like the straw that broke the camel’s back. I parked the car and I just started to cry.”

They attended the gala Cohen had been invited to, Cholewa said, because “I didn’t want to let her down.” But they didn’t stay long and went to Montreal police station 20 on Ste-Catherine St. W. to report the incident, he said.

Montreal police said they couldn’t take a report since the incident occurred on the highway. So on Friday, Cholewa filed a report with the SQ.

But with the shock now wearing off, Cholewa said he’s frustrated with what he sees as a lack of accountability by the authorities, including Transport Quebec, which is responsible for highways.

“The police kind of told me: ‘Look, file a claim with your insurance and that’s it,’” Cholewa said. “That’s why I’m frustrated. … We not only have to pay for the roads, but we also have to pay for the damages that we sustain for their lack of responsibility in maintaining the roads.”

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An SQ spokesperson was unable to confirm the incident on Saturday. However, Cholewa provided the report number to the Montreal Gazette.

“I could see it, spinning and picking up speed,” Cholewa said of the slab, which he said the officer confirmed was concrete. Cholewa said he figures the slab was at least eight inches in diameter. “The entire windshield was destroyed. The rearview mirror was hanging off.”

The technician at the dealership who replaced the windshield on Friday told him if it had been another make of car, it would have been fatal, Cholewa said. They were saved by the thickness and quality of the glass, he said.

Cholewa posted a photo of his damaged car and a description of what happened on a Facebook page dedicated to West Island news, saying he wanted to warn others.

“I want people to be careful out there and to just pay attention when they’re driving because you can’t look down, you’ve got to focus on the road, you’ve got to look at things coming at you,” he said.

lgyulai@postmedia.com

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