A trucker is being praised for his actions after helping pull a van driver, who swerved into his lane and hit his rig head-on, out to safety.
The accident happened on M-37, near Sager Road, in Barry County, Michigan, on Monday afternoon.
According to the Barry County Sheriff’s Office, a Safelight Auto Glass van was unable to stop in time when a vehicle two-cars in front of it suddenly slowed down to make a turn.
The Safelight Van clipped the car in front of it, then swerved into oncoming traffic, directly into the path of a semi truck that was coming downhill.
The driver of the semi truck said he only had 50 to 100 feet of room to react and was unable to avoid the van. The truck and auto glass van collided head-on, causing both vehicles to catch fire.
Moments after impact, the driver of the truck left his vehicle, fire extinguisher in-hand, and helped put out the flames from the auto glass van before pulling its driver to safety.
The trucker, Mike Johnson, told local WWMT news that he was a former firefighter and his “firefighter training instincts kicked in.”
“I grab my fire extinguisher, got around the vehicle and was trying to help the guy who was struck, it was just his ankles on the window. Flames were coming out of the vehicle. I tried getting the fire out and then helping him down and then other people came around to help move him over and then within minutes everything was burning,” Johnson said.
Johnson was not injured in the crash. The condition of the van driver is not known, although troopers said he was conscious and talking after being pulled out of the vehicle.
A stretch of M-37 was shut down for several hours after the accident but has since reopened.