But when, on their way there, the engineer and the martial arts instructor spotted a car driving erratically in the fast lane, it resulted in an unplanned, life-saving detour. After trying to get the driver’s attention and seeing that the man, who was driving around 30mph, was unconscious, he boldly decided to drive in front of the car, maintaining the same speed, before braking too slowly to hit the car . his vehicle and stop. He later found out that he had performed a controlled stop even though he had never done one before. He then jumped out of his car to try to save the man. Another driver helped him force his way into the car and 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 him home to Middleton, Greater Manchester. When 59-year-old Barlow first spotted the car and saw the man unconscious behind the wheel, he was convinced he was dead. Barlow drove in front of the man’s car before slowly braking. Photo: PA Media “I got into the middle lane and flashed him to move and motioned with my hands for him to move in front of me to join him on the hard shoulder,” he said. But when the man didn’t respond, she pulled up next to him and saw that he was not well. “He was almost completely gray and his lips were blue, and there was blood and vomit and stuff on his chin,” Barlow said. “I told my wife, ‘I think he’s dead… I can’t let it go [the car] going down the highway like that.” He drove in front of him before braking very slowly. “When he hit me the first time, my little boy was screaming but I couldn’t do anything. We had already decided that then we would try to stop him,” he said. After he tried in vain to break the window of the locked door with his elbow, another driver helped him in with a hammer. Having recently completed a first aid refresher course, he recalled pulling the man’s head back to help him breathe – “it was like a very loud gurgling sound” before he did this – in front of two women with medical knowledge followed by an off-duty doctor . a defibrillator came to his aid until the paramedics arrived. “It was a team effort,” Barlow said. She later discovered that the man had been released from the hospital and had suffered a seizure. The car suffered a few scratches and a slightly bent frame under the bumper, but he said it was “nothing to worry about”. Looking back, Barlow believes his actions were perhaps “a bit stupid”, but at the time, he was determined to help. “You just do things, you don’t, without thinking sometimes,” he added. Overall, though, it was a life-affirming experience. “All you get is bad news, don’t you,” he said, adding: “It’s all about loot and this and that, and everybody’s thinking [about] the state of the world, and then you see something like this and realize 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 spokesman for the force said: “When officers arrived at the scene, it was found that the driver of the car, a man in his 70s, had suffered a medical episode. It was also found that the car was brought to a safe stop by another driver, thus preventing a potential serious collision. “Emergency services were called and the road was closed while the man was taken to hospital for further treatment.”
