Michelle Baldwin was only minutes from her Lions Bay home driving on the Sea-to-Sky highway Friday night when a falling rock smashed into her window, sent shattered glass into the front seats, and nearly caused her to drive off the road.
"There was a big crash. The window just exploded... I screamed. I closed my eyes. I swerved over the road," Baldwin told CTV News on Thursday.
She was scared, but survived. Later, she showed CTV's St. John Alexander the dent the phone-book-sized rock left in her Volkswagen, as well as the massive gash it left in her seat.
"Thank god there was nobody sitting there," she said.
Early in the day, on the same highway near Porteau Cove, there was another hit -- this time it smashed into a pick-up truck.
Both incidents have one alarming link: They are on construction sites.
The RCMP says that falling rocks are common on the sea-to-sky highway, and construction has brought more rockfall.
"They do the best job they can to contain them, but in some incidents some rocks do fall on the road," said Dave Ritchie of the Squamish RCMP.
And it's very similar to what happened in February of last year, where hundreds of tons of rocks came crashing down on the highway. At the time, the government confirmed that blasting in the area was a factor.
Peter Kiewit and Sons is the construction contractor responsible for the work here, but referred CTV News to the Ministry of Transportation. The B.C. government said several measures are in place to keep the Sea-to-Sky Highway safe.
Baldwin is thankful her boyfriend wasn't driving that night -- because the passenger seat is where she normally sits.
With a report from CTV British Columbia's St. John Alexander
