When John Barlow set out on the M62 on Saturday with his family, he had planned simply to collect a new kitten for his seven-year-old son.
But when, on their way there, the engineer and martial arts instructor spotted a car driving erratically in the fast lane, he ended up taking an unplanned, lifesaving detour.
After attempting to get the driver’s attention and seeing that the man, who was driving at around 30mph, was unconscious, he boldly decided to drive in front of the car, keeping to the same speed, before braking very slowly so that the car would hit his vehicle and come to a halt.
He later found out that he had performed a controlled stop, despite having never done one before.
He then leapt out of his car to try to save the man. Another driver helped him to force his way into the car and he cleared the airway of the man, who is in his 70s, and worked with others to save his life.
Amazingly, his car escaped largely unscathed and he and Joey still managed to collect the Burmese kitten, Chip, from Scunthorpe and bring it home to Middleton, Greater Manchester.
When Barlow, 59, first spotted the car and saw the man unconscious behind the wheel, he was convinced he was dead.
“I got in the middle lane and I was flashing him to move over and gesturing my hands to move in front of me, to escort him to the hard shoulder,” he said. But when the man did not respond, he pulled up next to him and saw that he was not well.
“He was completely grey almost and his lips were blue, and there was blood and vomit and stuff coming down his chin,” Barlow said.
“I said to my wife, ‘I think he’s dead … I can’t just leave it [the car] going down the motorway like this.’”
He drove in front of him before braking very slowly. “When he hit me the first time, my little boy was screaming, but there was nothing I could do. We’d already decided then we were going to try and stop him,” he said.
After trying in vain to break the window of the locked door with his elbow, another driver helped him get in with a hammer.
Having recently completed a first aid refresher course, he remembered to pull the man’s head back to help him breathe – “it was like a very strained gurgle” before he did this – before two women with medical knowledge followed by an off-duty doctor with a defibrillator came to his aid, until paramedics arrived. “It was a team effort,” Barlow said.
He later found out that the man had been released from hospital and that he had had a seizure.
The car sustained a few scratches and a slightly twisted frame underneath the bumper, but he said it is “nothing to worry about”.
Looking back, Barlow thinks his actions were perhaps “a bit stupid”, but at the time, he was determined to help. “You just do things, don’t you, without thinking about it sometimes,” he added.
Overall, however, it was a life-affirming experience. “All you get is bad news, don’t you,” he said, adding: “It’s all about muggings and this and that, and everyone’s thinking [about] the state of the world, and then you see something like this and you actually realise that the majority of people are decent.”
West Yorkshire police said they received a report of a broken-down vehicle between junctions 29 and 30 of the M62 shortly after 3.15pm on Saturday, and discovered that a potentially serious collision had been avoided as a result of the actions of a driver.
A spokesperson for the force said: “When officers arrived on scene, it was established that the driver of the car, a man in his 70s, was having a medical episode. It was also established that the car had been brought to a safe stop by another motorist, therefore averting any potential serious collision.
“Emergency services were requested to attend and a road closure was put in place while the man was taken to hospital for further treatment.”
