A lorry sped along a motorway at 60mph completely unaware that a car was trapped sideways under its bumper.
The driver of the Renault Clio appeared to be desperately trying to release the car, pressing his brake lights on and off.
The frightening scene was caught on a mobile phone by passengers in another vehicle on the A1(M) near Wetherby, West Yorkshire.
As they spotted the car caught on the front of the lorry, a voice is heard screaming: 'He hasn't seen it!'
How the Clio came to be caught there, why the lorry driver did not spot it, and how long the motorist was trapped is currently a mystery.
The driver apparently emerged unhurt when the lorry driver eventually stopped.
The Arclid Transport lorry was travelling in the fast lane when it was spotted.
A spokesman for the Cheshire-based haulage firm refused to comment on the matter except to say a probe was underway.
A West Yorkshire police spokesman said they were aware of the footage, which they believed was filmed in January, but had no further details of the incident.
Arclid's website claims the company is the 'UK's leading road haulage and powder haulage company'.
They boast of having the 'highest level of customer service'.
They claim: 'Our service is our strength. We have developed an unsurpassed reputation for delivery where you want it, when you want it - swiftly and safely....'
Gen. Stanley McChrystal new doctrine , discourage use of air power , reduce collateral damage and civilian casualties. However , this put more troops on the ground and expose to troop casualities.
Graphic shows monthly U.S. troop deaths in the Afghanistan war
An Afghan soldier rolls a fuel barrel Saturday at the site where two hijacked fuel tankers were hit by a NATO airstrike Friday in Kunduz, Afghanistan.
Airstrikes by coalition forces in Afghanistan have dropped dramatically in the three months Gen. Stanley McChrystal has led the war effort there, reflecting his new emphasis on avoiding civilian casualties and protecting the population.
NATO fixed-wing aircraft dropped 1,211 bombs and other munitions during the past three months — the peak of the fighting season — compared with 2,366 during the same period last year, according to military statistics. The nearly 50% decline in airstrikes comes with an influx of more than 20,000 U.S. troops this year and an increase in insurgent attacks.
The shift is the result of McChrystal's new directives, said Air Force Col. Mark Waite, an official at the air operations center in southwest Asia. Ground troops are less inclined to call for bombing or strafing runs, though they often have an aircraft conduct a "show of force," a flyby to scare off insurgents, or use planes for surveillance, Waite said.
The decrease in air attacks may also be the result of having more ground troops, Waite said. Air attacks are often used when ground forces aren't available to secure an area or seize an objective.
Protecting civilians is generally more effective than large combat operations, McChrystal said in counterinsurgency directives issued to NATO forces in Afghanistan. "Destroying a home or property jeopardizes the livelihood of an entire family — and creates more insurgents," McChrystal wrote. "We sow the seeds of our own demise."
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said civilian casualties have been "dramatically reduced."
Airstrikes that accidently killed civilians have angered the population, undermining efforts to win over civilians.
Despite the reduction in airstrikes, a U.S. aircraft attacked two fuel tankers that had been hijacked by the Taliban last week in northern Afghanistan, killing civilians.
McChrystal has appointed a high-level commission to investigate the attack. An initial assessment concluded that civilians had been killed or injured in the blast, according to a statement issued Tuesday by NATO forces in Afghanistan.
The strike was authorized by German forces operating in the area. Tuesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned against rushing to judgment regarding the airstrike.
U.S. forces have been told to exercise extreme caution before ordering airstrikes.
By exercising so much restraint, the U.S. military may sacrifice a key firepower advantage on the battlefield and expose ground troops to more risk, some officers and analysts say.
"There is a tradeoff," said Col. Gian Gentile, a former battalion commander in Iraq who has publicly criticized counterinsurgency doctrine. "You reduce civilian casualties, but you potentially increase your own casualties."
Doug Macgregor, a retired Army colonel and military historian, says the emphasis on having conventional forces trying to win over the population is futile.
"You surrender whatever military advantage you have by compelling the U.S. conventional soldier or Marine to fight on terms that favor the enemy, not the American soldier or Marine," Macgregor said.
Fuel truck were surrounded by people to siphon the previous fuel which were hijacked . German authority that time believe it was surrounded by insurgents and ordered an air strike. The explosion cause causalities. Many to believed to around 90 people. Could be combination of villagers civilians and insurgents.
Afghani policemen look at one of two burnt fuel tankers, near Kunduz, Afghanistan.
Local Afghan people prepare to burry their villagers killed in a NATO air strike, in a mass grave near Kunduz, Afghanistan,
A victim of the NATO airstrike on an oil tanker hijacked by Taliban insurgents is carried into the main hospital in Kunduz.
The two fuel tankers would have looked out of place, stuck by a river bank outside a small Afghan village. Local people came out to take a look and help carry makeshift containers with siphoned fuel inside from the stricken vehicles.
That is when the Nato missiles struck, wiping out much of the village of Omar Kheil, and doing critical damage to US and Nato hopes of making a fresh start in Afghanistan.
Taliban militants had hijacked the two tankers on the main road out of Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan, and driven them to Omar Kheil, which is under their control, about 12 miles from the city. The hijacking, on Thursday night, was reported to the German Nato soldiers garrisoned nearby, who spotted the lorries this morning. At some point the German commander called in an air strike to deal with the problem. Estimates differ as to how many people were killed in the fireball, but they range from a few score to more than a hundred.
Muhammad Omar, the governor of Kunduz province, told the BBC 90 people were dead, but that number included senior Taliban militants.
Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, currently in the midst of an election controversy, said targeting civilians in any form was unacceptable and emphasised that innocent civilians must not be killed or wounded during military operations.
Nato's International Security and Assistance Force (Isaf) initially discounted reports that civilians were among the dead. "After assessing that only insurgents were in the area, the local Isaf commander ordered an air strike, which destroyed the fuel trucks, and a large number of insurgents were reportedly killed and injured," the first Isaf statement said.
That line was amended when the badly burned survivors started turning up at the local hospital.
Brigadier General Eric Tremblay told Reuters news agency: "It would appear that many civilian casualties are being evacuated and treated in the local hospitals. There is perhaps a direct link with the incident that has occurred around the two fuel trucks."
An investigation was launched into the incident which will focus on the decision by the German commander to call in the air strike. It happened in the same week the American commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal delivered a strategic assessment on the state of the war to Rasmussen and to Washington. It is known that one of its main thrusts was a change of emphasis from killing the Taliban to protecting civilians. Nato officers have been told that if they have Taliban fighters in their sights but there is a risk of civilian casualties they are to hold fire.
McChrystal believes Nato has alienated the Afghan people by excessive reliance on air strikes that have caused high civilian casualties. But Isaf functions as a patchwork of different national troop contingents, working in different circumstances and under different rules of engagement.
German troops function under restrictions imposed by Berlin, which are aimed at limiting their own casualties and have resulted in them being more operationally cautious. The restrictions, known as caveats, have infuriated other Nato contingents operating alongside them. If the investigation suggests that an air strike was called in because the German force was reluctant to commit troops on the ground to recover the tankers, it will escalate a long-running row over caveats in Afghanistan that is endangering Nato unity.
Alongside a Taliban resurgence, there have also been reports of Uzbek groups operating in affiliation with al-Qaida. Security on the roads connecting Afghanistan to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan is crucial to the Nato war effort after the route through the Khyber pass was crippled last year
Marastial, the MP from Kunduz, said the hijacking of the trucks was part of a concerted Taliban effort to disrupt trucks taking fuel down from the US built bridge at the border crossing from Tajikistan.
