Kyle & Jackie O star involved in horrific car accident: Radio presenter ‘woke up unconscious and upside down in traffic’

A Kyle & Jackie O Show star was involved in a ‘major car accident’ on their way home from work in Sydney, ending up unconscious and upside down in his car.

Sports presenter Cooper Johns, 25, was driving home on Wednesday afternoon when a taxi swerved into his lane, causing his car to lift into the air and flip.

‘The cab swerved a little bit into Cooper’s lane and Cooper’s tire on the front left side of his Subaru clipped the taxi’s tire and then Cooper’s car just lifted into the air and bang onto the roof,’ host Kyle Sandilands explained on Thursday morning. 

‘All pandemonium broke loose… Cooper was rescued and driven away by a listener,’ Kyle, 53, added, with Cooper later explaining a listener named John drove him ‘six minutes up the road’ to his next job on a Sportsbet podcast.

‘Is Cooper injured?’ host Jackie ‘O’ Henderson asked.

‘Not injured enough not to come to work. He will be coming this morning, but he’s got to wait until his mum wakes up to drive him to work,’ Kyle said.

‘But he’s not injured at all?’ Jackie, 50, pushed.

Kyle and KIIS FM producers went on to explain Cooper is currently suffering from ‘whiplash’ and a ‘concussion’ which was ‘playing up’ on Wednesday night, with Cooper later explaining he began vomiting.

They then assured Cooper was only coming into the breakfast radio show studio to give his account of what happened before heading back home to rest. 

A short while later, the ex footy star arrived at work. 

‘I don’t really remember how it happened… I’m driving along in my Subaru. It gets me from A to B, usually. Sometimes it has a detour and flips me upside down,’ Cooper joked.

He went on to say he has no memory of how the accident first occurred. 

‘My first memory is just feeling the hit of the tire. The cops told me they had never seen anything like this because his [the taxi driver] car was not damaged at all. He drove off. He was fine,’ Cooper continued.

He said the taxi driver suffered no injuries or damage to his car and seemed more concerned about getting back to work once the police arrived to secure the scene.

‘He was a cabbie right? Did he have a fare? The metre is going,’ Kyle joked. 

‘He kept being like, “I have work. I need to go.” The cops were like just relax, we need details,’ Cooper explained. 

The radio star continued: ‘I’ve clipped his wheel… Then I’ve just flipped. I was in the air. It was like I was in space. 

‘I felt like Katy Perry… My glove-box and middle compartment opened. Everything was floating in front of me.

‘My spare tire that was in the boot flew into the backseat… I just landed on the concrete and then I was sliding along the concrete on the roof.

‘I was sitting in my seat kind of dazed… First instinct was, “Did I just kill someone?” That was the scariest part. I didn’t care what happened to me, but if I just hit someone I couldn’t deal with that.

‘The second thing was, I must have been listening to ABBA. I was listening to Voulez-Vous. My second thought after that was, “S***, I’ve got to turn the radio off”.’

‘I reach across to my radio to turn it down because I was like if the coppers come and drag me out of this thing, I do not want Voulez-Vous playing. I was that embarrassed.’

Cooper then managed to get his seat-belt undone and ‘just dropped’ into the windshield of his upside down car. 

Thankfully, the taxi driver managed to help Cooper get his car door open so the radio star could crawl out, noting the traffic had backed up across two lanes behind him.  

Cooper quit the NRL at the start of 2024 following stints with the Melbourne Storm and Manly Sea Eagles dating back to 2020.

The former five-eighth, who is the son of Rugby League legend Matthew ‘Matty’ Johns, then joined The Kyle and Jackie O Show as a full-time radio producer.