DRIVERS were forced to take emergency action when a motorist drove the wrong way down a busy dual carriageway.

Motorists couldn't believe their eyes when they saw the small hatchback driving down the A19 on Teesside.

The woman driver narrowly avoided causing a crash as she drove an orange car, believed to be a Ford Fiesta, along the stretch of road from North Ormesby to Middlesbrough town centre.

Danny Lane, 19, from Normanby, was in a car with two friends when the drama unfolded.

He even filmed the scene on a mobile phone.

The RAF technician thinks the car may have joined the A66 at a new interchange near North Ormesby and mistakenly driven onto the wrong side of the dual carriageway.

The car then drove towards Middlesbrough, with Mr Lane filming from the correct side of the road.

"We were going to get something to eat and we saw this woman driving on the other side of the road," he said.

"It looked like an orange Ford Fiesta and the driver was a woman who looked to be about 50.

"Cars were swerving all over and changing lanes. A van had to cut in to get out of the way and nearly wiped another car out.

"We got our phones out straight away."

Mr Lane, who is serving at RAF Wittering, near Peterborough, has about 20 seconds of footage on his mobile, showing the vehicles swerving to avoid the car.

His friend, Mark Higgins, 20, from Eston, said he could not believe what he saw.

The apprentice joiner said: "We were going about 40mph and the car must have been going about the same speed."

Fellow passenger Danny Matthews, 23, from Normanby, said: "We thought she must be mad."

Mr Lane said: "We called the police to report it and they couldn't believe it, they just said 'What?'. We didn't see the car again as it stopped and we had to carry on."

A Cleveland Police spokesman said: "We did send officers and had a police car down there within a couple of minutes. They searched, but nothing was found."