I was on the M42 heading towards Birmingham. The weather was pretty awful, and was just about improving when I was driving along and saw a truck drive past with a load of rocks on the back of its trailer.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement, with what looked like a bird. I suddenly realised that this 'bird' was not a bird, but in fact a fist-sized rock heading straight for my car window. In the space of about half a second, I threw my body to the side instinctively fully expecting this rock to break my window. With an almighty bang it hit my driving side window, bouncing off and leaving no damage whatsoever. I managed to remain driving straight ahead as I felt the shock rip through me as I gaped wide-eyed ahead. I could not believe how loud the hit was, I could easily have crashed because of the impact if I had lost control of my steering in the bad conditions. The rock must have glanced rather than hit head on, fortunately.

I have a bad history of being hit with things as I drive along the road. Fortunately not cars, but items bouncing around in the road. I do plenty of driving in my job, and around a year ago was driving near the metro centre when I saw a rock fly across my field of vision, whack into my windscreen leaving a nice hole in the window. Autoglass came out and fixed the outlayer, but the inner middle layer of resin was damaged meaning only a temporary fix job was possible. I still need to replace that windscreen!

Another incident was driving along the winding road near Lobley Hill behind a truck when a builders helmet came off the back of it and bounced towards my car, straight under it, and a large crunch sound as the engine crushed it. I waited, in vain, to see if it came out the other side but all I got was a grinding sound as the car dragged the helmet along the road. I had to get out of the car and pull it out by hand. The exact same thing happened to me near the BBC studio in Newcastle, where another helmet got wedged around one of the pipes under my car. That was a slow process and anyone driving along must have wondered what on earth was going on as I was head first under the car.

So the rock was the fourth incident. So anyone wondering why a convertible is not high on my wanted list of things to buy should take note, its for my own safety.