The family's car was among the last to reach the pile-up on the Trakia motorway. The mother, who was driving to Burgas with her husband and their 15-month-old child, told how she stopped inches from a lorry.

The crash days ago involved 86 vehicles. Twelve people died and 50 were injured. Three of the dead were from one family in the village of Samuilovo, and some of the injured are still in hospital in serious condition. A similar pile-up happened on the same motorway in late March 2014, near the village of Trilistnik, when two people died and 15 were injured.

Earlier on this story: Trakia motorway pile-up is not the first of its kind in Bulgaria

The woman said the collisions had been going on for about 10 minutes by the time the family got there. Many lorries were already ahead of them.

Near the 287th kilometre the fog suddenly thickened and nothing at all could be seen on the road. She was driving at 80 km/h, and other cars were overtaking her. Men in high-visibility vests ran along the road with torches, waving their arms and shouting at drivers to stop.

She sensed something was wrong but could not see what was ahead. She says she panicked and hit the brakes, but the car did not stop in time. She was crying with fear. In the end she pulled into the emergency lane on the far right, behind stopped lorries, and stopped inches from one of them.

When she braked hard, the child fell from the car seat onto the floor behind the driver's seat. Her first thought was to get to the child. She took the child out through the rear door and ran from the car, because drivers coming from behind did not know about the crash and she feared a fatal hit.

Right behind their car, a car driven by a young woman hit a lorry loaded with bricks. The mother is not sure, but she believes the car went into the lorry by a metre or more. She saw the impact and says she will never forget it. She was in shock. No more crashes followed the young woman's car.

The driver of the brick lorry invited the mother, the child and the young woman to warm up in his cab, while the husband stayed outside. People at the scene kept waving their arms and torches and shouting at drivers to stop. Some were crying. The woman says she will be grateful for the rest of her life to the driver and to everyone who warned the cars. She thanked God that she and her child are alive, and said she is with the families of the dead and the injured.

She says nobody called 112, because people did not know what was happening and the pile-up kept growing. She believes the authorities reacted very quickly.

The family stayed at the scene for about an hour. Then a crossover was made and the family was sent back the way it came.