LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN — High winds knocked a semi truck off its wheels on the Bonnet Carré Spillway, and an eyewitness who captured the moment on video says he's never seen anything like it.

Jerry J. Hanna recorded the video from his car right behind the semi as it happened.

"I don't know a little bit of amazement, a little bit of a fear of what might would happen," Hanna said. "I was very afraid of the little white car was trying to pass him and I didn't want them to be on that side of him when it happened, but they would have been flattened like a pancake."

State troopers say the driver suffered minor injuries. State police will continue investigating exactly how it all happened.

Hanna says the driver appeared to do everything he could to keep the 18-wheeler under control as the winds whipped across the open water.

"He reduced speed. He tried to moderate it the best he could," Hanna said. "Like I say, if he would have saved it from that, it was gusting. It wasn't just a steady breeze. So he had a few previous gusts that leaned his truck noticeably enough to make me start videoing."

Hanna also says the truck's position in the right lane helped the driver avoid an even worse outcome.

"It also was kind of smart of him to be in the right lane," Hanna said. "If he had been in the left lane and blew over, he would have rode over the rail and had a, you know, 20-foot fall to the swampy water down below."

Research from Houston Transtar shows vehicles like semis are especially vulnerable to strong crosswinds. The company uses a calculated 70 mile per hour crosswind as the threshold before recommending closing a road.

Florida's Department of Transportation takes a more direct approach. 18 bridges in the state have wind sensors installed that measure conditions in real time and send alerts to traffic management centers to start closing bridges when wind conditions reach 30 miles per hour, then increase in five mile increments giving officials more time and information to decide when a bridge should close.

Louisiana's DOTD told WBRZ they only shut down state roads in extreme circumstances when a road is impassable due to ice or high water. According to federal highway officials, weather hazards likely play some type of role in more than 1 million crashes a year.