BAD weather contributed to a series of crashes on North Yorkshire roads over the weekend.

On Saturday evening, a rain shower hit leaving road surfaces slippery.

At around 7.15pm, a red BMW on the A59 near Moor Monkton failed to get around a left hand bend safely and spun off the road leaving the driver with a minor injury to his ear.

TC David Minto, who went to the scene, said the driver had not realised the effect of the wet weather on the road surface, and he said on twitter the driver had had a lucky escape.

Shortly after that crash a black Jaguar spun off the wet road surface near the A1(M) slip road at Flaxby.

The car skidded backwards down a long embankment and crashed into a fence at the bottom. The two adults and two children travelling in the car were all unhurt, police said.

Earlier in the evening, police and firefighters had been called to the hard shoulder of the A1(M) between junctions 46 and 47 on the southbound carriageway, when a car caught fire because of an electrical fault in the engine.

At around midday on Saturday, another crash on the A162 near Burton Salmon left a car balanced against a fence at the top of a 20 foot drop.

Two cars had clipped and one had spun off the road down the embankment, where it came to rest at a 45 degree angle above the drop.

Firefighters were called and had to cut doors off the car to free a 24-year-old woman trapped inside, before she was taken to hospital with a suspected broken arm. Nobody else was in the car and the driver of the second car was unhurt.