68-year-old man hit by car in 2019 woke up from coma believing he was 24 and in 1980

A 68-year-old man who was hit by a car and ended up in a coma lost almost 40 years of memories when he woke up.

Being hit by a car and going back in time is the sort of thing that only really happens in Life on Mars, as in real life, you wake up hoping not to be too badly injured.

Unfortunately for one Italian man who was hit by a car in 2019, when he awoke from his coma he had lost the memories of decades and his nearest and dearest were strangers to him.

According to Il Messaggero, Luciano D'Adamo was the victim of a hit-and-run and after recovering from his coma the last thing he remembered was stepping out of his house in Rome in 1980.

The Italian man in his younger days which he thought he was still in when he woke up from his coma (Luciano D'Adamo)

With him in the hospital were a man and woman he didn't recognise, his son and wife, as to him it was back in the days when he was getting ready to marry his girlfriend and he didn't know who this woman with him was.

He no longer remembered married life with her, and also didn't remember what he looked like as he struggled to understand that the man in his reflection was him.

After waking up one of the first things he did was ask a nurse if he could call his mother, but didn't recognise the device he was handed as mobile phones hadn't been around much in 1980.

He also didn't remember that his mother had died, and had to adjust to all of the developments with family and friends which had happened in the years between 1980 and 2019.

Of course, the technological advances of the last few decades took a lot of work to catch up on as well, and Luciano remembered being dazzled by being in a car which had a map on a screen and would tell you when to turn.

In reality the man was a 68-year-old in 2019, not 1980, and had forgotten getting married as well as his son and pretty much everything in between (Luciano D'Adamo)

"Every now and then I meet someone who greets me," the man told Il Messaggero.

"It will surely be an old friend but I don't know who it is, however out of kindness I pretend to recognize him and reciprocate.

"Sometimes I say that I would like to fly on a plane, I have never done it. My wife says to me 'What are you talking about? We were in Paris together'. And I reply: 'you have been there, I haven't'."

Since he woke up from his coma after being hit by a car, he has been working with doctors to learn how to socialise again and try to fill the gaps in his memory which he lost.