Car's emergency call system helped save Highway 24 driver's life

A woman who rolled her car down the side of U.S. 24 on Wednesday has her car's emergency call system to thank for helping to save her life.

Police said 55-year-old Theresa Collier was eastbound on Highway 24 through Manitou Springs when at about 10 a.m., for an unknown reason, her car left the road, accelerated, became airborne for some 90 feet and then crashed and rolled for more than 100 feet down the embankment near Williams Canyon.

Her battered car came to rest in a ravine about 250 feet from the roadway, police said.

No one reported seeing the crash, and the wreckage wasn't visible from the road, said Manitou Springs Fire Department spokesman David Hunting, one of the first responders to the crash scene.

But when the air bags deployed, her car, a 2010 Mercedes Benz M Class, sent an emergency message with her GPS coordinates to Colorado State Patrol, Manitou Springs police and El Paso County Sheriff's deputies.

"That certainly helped save her life," Hunting said, because when rescue crews arrived, he said there was no sign of a crash, and the car was nowhere in sight.