A paralyzed man who was trapped when his car drove off an upstate New York road and plummeted down an embankment is alive to tell the tale.

Christopher Drake survived for 30 hours despite freezing temperatures and internal bleeding.

Drake has been paralyzed from the waist down almost all his life. He says he used his arms to drag himself to the top of the embankment after the Thursday morning crash in western Sullivan County. But he slipped and rolled back to the bottom.

Police say Drake was too tired to try again, so he took shelter in his car to help fight the cold. He had no cell phone.

More than 24 hours after the crash, the car was noticed by a 14-year-old boy looking out the window of a bus on his way home from school.