Car Crash Confession Claudia's Darkest Days

The accident that nearly destroyed her.

- Ashleigh Mcenaney

When Claudia Hoskins first met Zac Franich, she revealed she’d once broken 19 bones. But what the bubbly blonde didn’t confess to the Bachelor that night was how she’d narrowly avoided death in a brutal car crash shortly after discovering her then-boyfriend had been unfaithful.

After being pulled unconscious from the wreckage of her mangled vehicle in rural Auckland, the reality star, 21, now knows just how lucky she was to survive. But at the time of the accident, in January last year, Claudia took her life into her own hands when she intentionally drove her car off the road and into a power pole.

“I wasn’t thinking about the consequences it would have on my family, my friends and my boyfriend – I just made a split decision in the moment,” the Bachelorette tells Woman’s Day. “All I remember thinking was, ‘How am I ever going to recover from this?’

“I didn’t think I could ever be happy again and I didn’t want to deal with the fall-out of the relationship. I just wanted the moment to be done. So I saw power poles and went for it.”

Moments earlier, Claudia and her partner of 18 months got into an explosive row when she claims she discovered he was cheating on her with a number of women.