A FAMILY are lucky to be alive after a car ploughed through the front door of their home in Old Basing.

A mother and one of her two sons had to climb out of a window of their four-bedroom detached house in Belle Vue Road, after the Renault Clio is thought to have driven straight across the road from the junction of Fairthorn Rise, and smashed through their garden wall and into their home.

The mother, who did not want to be named, said she was in the shower washing her hair when she heard a loud bang.

She told The Gazette: “I still had shampoo in my hair.

"My eldest son was standing in the hall. There’s a lump of concrete which just missed him.”

She added: “I looked over the bannister and thought ‘oh my god’. I could hear the kids screaming. I said ‘if you can get out, get out’.”

Her husband was at a friend’s house at the time of the crash, and when the fire brigade arrived they helped the woman and her nine-year-old son, who was in his bedroom, escape through an upstairs window.

Her 12-year-old son managed to get out through the kitchen window and into the garden.

The incident happened at around 7.50am after the male driver of the Renault Clio is believed to have suffered a “medical event”.

Two crews from Basingstoke fire station and Hartley Wintney fire station cut the 60-year-old driver from the car.

Incident commander, crew manager Jerry Leonard, based at Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service’s headquarters in Eastleigh, said: “The man was passing in and out of consciousness.”

A spokesman for South Central Ambulance Service said they believed the motorist had “some sort of medical event which led to him veering off the road”.

He was taken by ambulance to Basingstoke hospital where his condition is said to be “non life-threatening”.

Still shaken by the incident, the woman said: “Bricks and mortar can be fixed but I'm thankful we are all okay.

"My thoughts are with the bloke in the car.”