A driving instructor and his student had a lucky escape when a driver threw something at their car, smashing the windscreen, during a lesson.

Stevie Hicks, of Mayland Road, Witham, and his student, a Felsted School pupil, were driving along Roxwell Road when a man in a grey car travelling in the opposite direction hurled something at their red MINI Cooper Countryman.

The object shattered the outside laminate of the windscreen on the driver’s side leaving a “cricket ball sized” dent and cracks in the glass, causing £800 of damage.

Mr Hicks, who has been a driving instructor for Benson School of Motoring for 11 years, was horrified by the incident.

He said: "It didn’t actually go through the window but as it’s on the driver’s side it was a lucky escape as if it had come through we wouldn’t be talking to you now, we’d be dead.”

Essex Police asked anyone with any information to contact them on 101.