CLEVELAND COUNTY, N.C. -- Firemen and troopers were stunned by the sight of a four-door Ford with the front bumper on a creek bed and a rear wheel gripping a wood plank on a one-lane bridge on Gin Road. It appeared as though the slightest nudge might topple the car head over heels.

Kenneth Humphries, the man at the wheel Friday morning, blinked his eyes as he tried to recall the frightening crash an hour later.

"I didn't know what to think. I was in shock," he said. " I was just . . . I'm . . . I'm just in shock."

Just before 8 a.m., Humphries was taking a drive down the remote Cleveland County road near Lattimore when he rounded a curve with a sign warning of a one-lane bridge.

"Whenever I seen it narrow down, it was too late," he said.

He ran off the road and hit one of the 6-inch-high wood planks that serve as guardrails.

"My car went airborne, and there was nothing holding it but the back tire," he said.

That tire kept the car from flipping over onto a rock, which would have crushed the roof of the car.

Trooper Brian Theis called Humphries a "very lucky individual." He said Humphries is not familiar with the road, and his speed might have helped cause the wreck. Humphries was charged with exceeding a safe speed for conditions.

Theis said it is hard to explain why the car didn't turn completely over.

"Momentum is a funny thing," he said.

Humphries said he wonders why there are no metal guardrails on the small bridge. Mark Newton, a North Carolina Department of Transportation supervisor for the crew that inspected the bridge after the wreck, said only a handful of people use the bridge daily.

One of them, a farmer with property on both sides of the river, said, "The equipment is so large it won't fit across the bridge with rails on it."

Troopers said they have had a few wrecks on the road, but none that they can remember on the bridge.