A SAFETY expert is demanding action after his car was damaged in a car wash.

Richard Wrigley watched in disbelief as the boot of his red Jaguar got caught up in the mechanism of the drying machine at the car wash at Sainsbury's Shore Head supermarket.

"I looked in the rear view mirror to see this red thing and realised it was the boot of the car," he said.

"The drying equipment had lifted the boot until it would go no further and crumpled it.

"I got out and left the driver's door open. I was looking for a stop button.

"The next thing I saw was my car door opening further. I tried to move the car forward, but the drier pushed the door open until it was at right angles to the car body."

Mr Wrigley, who is a director of Fenay Machine Safety Ltd at Paddock, said staff had told him to get two quotes for work to repair the boot and the door.

He said: "There was no way of stopping the machine and there are no safety instructions for drivers.

"Someone could have been badly injured. The machine didn't stop when it came into contact with the car boot, it just carried on its way."

Mr Wrigley said the machine must have caught on something, but insisted the boot had been properly closed when he took the car into the wash.

"If it had been open, a warning light would have appeared on the dashboard," he said. "I would also have had a boot full of water."

A spokesman for the Sainsbury's store said: "The car wash has been taken out of use and we have had it inspected by the company that supplied it.

"We have also reported the incident to head office who are dealing with it and will be contacting the customer."

But he said for their own safety people should never get out of their vehicles while the car was passing through the car wash.