AN appeal was made last night for information from witnesses to a mystery accident on a rural road involving only one vehicle.

The motorist involved, the only casualty, suffered serious injuries in the incident on the A6076 Burdon Plain, which spans the Durham/Tyne and Wear county boundary between Stanley and Sunniside, west of Gateshead.

Accident investigators are keen to discover why a Ford Focus car, heading northbound, left the road, collided with fencing, before coming to rest on an embankment alongside a stretch of the Tanfield Railway line.

The car driver, a 24-year-old man from the Durham City area, was cut free from the vehicle by firefighters from the Durham brigade before being taken to Gateshead's Queen Elizabeth Hospital, suffering serious multiple injuries.

A Northumbria Police spokesman asked for information from any witnesses to the accident, a quarter of a mile from the Burdon Plain junction with Hedley Lane, shortly after 7am yesterday.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the motor patrols unit, at Whickham Police Station, on 0191-454 7555, extension 64326, or 64552.