A schoolboy running across the Princes Highway may have been a factor in a three-car crash that saw a woman trapped in her vehicle.
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Just before 9am a silver Toyota Camry travelling south along the highway swerved to the opposite side of the road and collided head-on with a white Hyundai hatchback.
The force of the impact shunted the Hyundai backwards into a Commodore that had seen the oncoming Camry and had already stopped.
Sabrina Lu was driving the Commodore and she was shaken but unscathed.
She said he was heading home after dropping her son off at Keira High School.
Ms Lu said she saw a boy had run across the highway, which caused the driver of the Camry to swerve.
Other witnesses have said the lights were green for traffic travelling on the Princes Highway at the time of the accident.
The woman in the hatchback had to be freed by Fire and Rescue NSW.
Norm Rees, NSW Ambulance duty operations manager, said the woman was suffering pelvic and spinal injuries and was taken to Wollongong Hospital.
The driver of the Camry, who was taking his two 14-year-old sons to Keira High, suffered chest pain.
One of his sons, sitting in the middle of the rear seat, had abdominal injuries while his brother sitting next to him was uninjured.
All three were able to get themselves out of the car.
Warren Maynell was driving along the highway in the left lane, next to Ms Lu, when the accident happened.
"The next minute I saw this guy just appear out of nowhere," Mr Maynell said of the Camry driver.
"He was heading south and he'd come from the other side of the road and he'd come shooting over. I thought 'he's going to get me, I've got no hope'."
Mr Maynell hit the brakes and managed to avoid the collision, but felt the woman in the hatchback did not see the oncoming car because she didn't pull up.
"I jumped out of my car and checked on the lady in the Commodore," he said.
"I looked at her and said 'are you okay?'. She said yep, then I went round to this lady here and did what I could. She was in quite a lot of distress so I did whatever I could to calm her.
"She grabbed hold of my hand as I tried to talk to her tell her to calm down and take it easy."