A car travelling at 90 mph in St. Louis, Missouri, flew off of a hill and crashed on top of a roof on Sunday (16 July).

Fire crews were called to Walnut Park West neighborhood at around 1pm (7pm BST) to rescue the driver of the car after it became lodged in the roof of a house.

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No one was in the house at the time of the accident. The driver was taken to hospital in critical condition.

"The occupant of that house was away at the gym – very fortunate," an emergency worker said in a video shared on Facebook.

"I'll tell you I've never seen anything like that in my life...and I probably won't ever see it again," eyewitness Larry Davis told local broadcaster KMOV.

"The car was going pretty fast, maybe 80-90 mph. He never took his foot off the gas. You could tell, he never took his foot off the gas," he said.

Davis said the car drove over the curb at a T-intersection and up a small hill in front of the house where it launched into the air and landed on the roof.

The driver was a man in his 40s, according to Davis. "He was just happy to be alive. You could tell he had a couple of broken bones. It was visible, a lot of blood," he said.

The St. Louis Fire Department said the man was trapped inside his car on the roof for over an hour. His SUV was towed from the roof three hours after the crash.

Neighbours say it is not the first time a vehicle has crashed near the intersection.

"This is the second time it's happened since I've been here for 6 months," said Angelo Bridges, who lives in the area.

"People just speeding, not stopping for stop signs. Our church fence has damage from a car accident that happened just a few weeks ago, but I've never seen anybody come that fast. They need to put some speed bumps or something down," he said.