A woman stopped her car on the Norfolk Southern tracks along Highway 80 just after midnight on Tuesday (0400 GMT Wednesday) to phone a friend and ask for directions. She wasn’t aware that she had stopped on the railroad, but luckily a police officer convinced her to get out of the car. About 30 seconds later, the oncoming passenger train hit the vehicle.

The incident took place in Greer, South Carolina, and the whole scene was captured on the police officer's dashboard camera. On tape, Sgt Marcus O'Shields is seen insisting on Ms Betsy Devall to leave her car, because there was no time to remove it from the tracks.

Ms Devall tried to back off the track but the car was stuck. She told the local WYFF News 4 channel after the crash that she didn’t realize where she had stopped her vehicle.

The video shows Ms Devall bursting into tears as her car was swept away by the passenger train. While crying she said to Sgt Marcus O'Shields:

"Thank you, thank you for saving me officer."

The car landed more than 100m (330 ft) from the place of the impact.  

"You've seen the video," O'Shields told WYFF.

"It tells the whole story. It's pretty graphic, and we don't see the rest of it, with the car catching on fire on down the track. It gets your nerves going pretty good."

Although her car was totally ruined, Ms Devall said she was just happy that she got out of it with her life.

Amtrak engineer Scott Lynch was driving the train carrying 180 passengers. He was running about 72 miles per hour when he spotted the taillights of the stuck automobile and O’Shields waving a flashlight, according to a police incident report. He activated the emergency brakes, but couldn’t avoid the impact.

Sgt O’Shields said that he could smell gasoline and shortly after that the car burst into flames.

"I do think that he was a godsend. I would be in a body bag in a million pieces," Ms DeVall said later of O’Shields.