A martial arts instructor has described the heart-stopping moment he saved a driver who passed out in a motorway fast lane - after seeing blood pour from his mouth. John Barlow, 59, was travelling with his wife and young son on the M62 in Yorkshire to pick up a new kitten on Sunday when he noticed the motorist holding up traffic.
But as he drove alongside him he saw the “grey” looking driver - in his “mid-to-late 60s" -covered in blood and feared he was “dead”. Brave John then pulled in front of the stricken motorist and used his family's Hyundai Santa Fe to bring the man’s Audi A3 to a complete stop.
And after a fellow motorist smashed open the passenger door, John used his first aid training to help the man breath by tilting his head back to keep his airways open. An an off-duty police officer and doctor then took control of the situation and John got the “amazing” news later that evening saying the man had left hospital.
John, who also works as a service engineer, said: “When I looked in his car, it was pretty horrific. He looked dead if I’m being honest with you. I said to my wife: 'Oh my god, I think he’s dead!'
“So I moved forward at the same speed as him and pulled in front and then I very slowly started slowing down. Maybe some people think I should have been thinking about my family, but you just do things without thinking about. Then I got a phone call off the officer. He said he was stable enough to go home that night, which was amazing.”
John, from Middleton, Greater Manchester, said he was travelling eastbound along the M62 near Leeds at 3pm when he came across the slow-moving Audi.
He said: “I was with my son and we bought him a little Burmese cat. They’re quite rare, so we were travelling over to Scunthorpe to collect this little cat for him.
“We got past Leeds and I noticed the traffic slowing down, and it got slower and slower. It just seemed strange that this guy was in the outside lane and getting slower. He was going 50mph and then he got slower still and some cars started undertaking him."
John said he pulled up alongside the car as his speed dropped to 30mph and tried to wave him over to the hard shoulder, believing that he might have a punctured tyre. But when he looked through the window at the driver, he saw the grey-coloured man with blood pouring from his mouth.
He said: “It was probably the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life. He was grey, his head was slumped a little bit forward, and he had blood and all kinds of stuff coming out of his mouth and trickling down his chin. I could see that his lips had gone blue.”
Heroic John then pulled in front of the man's Audi vehicle and used his family’s SUV to try to bring the car to a complete standstill.
He said: “I very slowly started slowing down. It was a bit of a crunch when he first hit, and then he crunched again. Once he hit the second time, I thought he won’t bounce too far, and then I put my brakes on and slowed him down until he ground to a stop.”
John jumped out of his car and was joined by a local tradesman, who used a hammer from his van to smash the passenger side window of the man's car, which was locked. And he then sat alongside the barely conscious driver and used his first aid skills to help him breathe again.
John said: “I could see straight away that he wasn’t breathing – it was like a very faint gurgling noise. But I’m a coach at Middleton Martial Arts Academy, and fortunately, we had a fresher course on first aid, so what I did was took the top of his head and tilted it back to help him breathe. He took a big gasp of air, but it was really laboured and gurgling.”
John was later joined by an off-duty physiotherapist, police officer and doctor, and together they worked with the man to stabilise him before paramedics arrived. And he was relieved to get the call later in the evening that the man had survived the terrifying ordeal and was back with his family.
He said: “The deputy chief constable for West Yorkshire police phoned and said, 'I just want to thank you for everything you’ve done', and she said 'We want to give you an award'.
“But I said there was more than just me involved. If the fitter hadn’t stopped, we wouldn’t have got the door open in time – and the other two girls were amazing.”
John said he hopes to be reunited with the man, believed to be the father of a West Yorkshire policeman, in future.
He said: “I would love to meet up with him. It’s not very often you get to be part of saving the life of somebody. But I’ll leave it up to him."
West Yorkshire Police has been contacted for comment.
