A 78-year-old Honolulu woman sustained critical head and body injuries yesterday morning when the car she was driving collided with a tractor-trailer and flipped over just before the Moanalua Freeway’s Puuloa Road/Tripler Hospital westbound offramp.

Emergency officials said the woman was treated at the scene and taken to Tripler in critical condition after the 7:20 a.m. crash.

Police traffic investigators said a 2005 Kenworth tractor-trailer was traveling on Kaua Street, which merges onto the freeway, when it was struck by the 1991 silver Camry as the woman tried to exit the freeway.

The Camry "became attached" to the front bumper of the truck, which stopped immediately. The car then dislodged and hit a concrete wall on the north side of the road, police said, coming to rest on its top in the area between the freeway and the offramp.

The driver of the truck, 30, was uninjured.

The crash closed the far-right lane of Waianae-bound traffic on the freeway near the Puuloa exit for several hours.