An Omaha woman was critically injured in a traffic accident just north of 144th and Blondo on Thursday afternoon. She is expected to recover.

The crash happened near 144th and Grant.

Tonya Szymczak has come to recognize the sounds of accidents in her neighborhood.

"A real big bang," she said. "There's accidents here all the time. So you know as soon as you hear that bang, you know something happened."

On Thursday, Tonya heard the sound and found a truck on its side. A car was heavily damaged.

Police say that 40-year-old Perry Schatz was southbound on 144th Street near Grant, just north of Blondo, in his Ford pickup truck. He swerved into the northbound lane to avoid a rear-end collision with a vehicle stopped in the southbound lane.

The pickup hit a Saturn, nearly head-on. The Saturn was being driven by 51-year-old Lori Gaines of Omaha.

Ms. Gaines suffered facial fractures and a dislocated hip but is expected to recover. Shatz was not injured.

Tonya Szymczak says when she arrived at the crash site, her first concern was the woman pinned in the Saturn.

"The whole car was right there on her lap," she said. "The one lady was yelling at her and trying to get her to respond and she wasn't really responding."

Tonya's husband Ed says they see an accident every month but they are not always this bad.

He says, "People just seem to lose their mind coming down this hill."

Police say that both Shatz and Gaines were wearing seat belts. They say that prevented the accident from being worse than it was.