An elderly driver may have crashed through the gate before a Metra train slammed into his vehicle at a crossing on Dundee Road in Northbrook this afternoon, a witness said.

The impact severed the car, sending the back half through a fence and into the yard of a home.

“He hit the gate, he must have,” said Marshall Dennison, a contractor working in the neighborhood near Dundee Road and Fair Lane, pointing to where a portion of the gate sat on the west side of the tracks.

The accident happened at about 1:30 p.m. when a southbound Metra train struck a westbound car. Neither police nor Metra officials could immediately provide details about the accident.

At 4:50 p.m., a Metra spokesman said he did not have much to update.

“Our cop is still at the hospital talking to the driver,” the spokesman said, adding he did not know the man’s name or condition.

Metra train No. 2136 had departed Fox Lake at 12:45 p.m. and was scheduled to arrive in downtown Chicago at 2:18 p.m., the spokesman said.

“The lights were clearly blinking and the gate was down,” said Charlie Eastman, who was eastbound approaching the tracks, but did not see what happened just before the crash.

The contents of the victim’s trunk were strewn across street — golf clubs, books, acrylic paints.

The front half of the car came to rest on the west side of the tracks.

“I was the one who opened the door, he asked what happened,” said Dennison, referring to the driver he said appeared to be in his 80s.

“His forehead was all scraped,” Dennison added. “It didn’t look like a fracture. He wasn’t talkative at all. He was pretty delirious.”

Dennison said the driver was wearing a seatbelt and the airbag had deployed. Dennison waited for paramedics to arrive to remove the man from his vehicle.