Positivity: Lorry-crash driver saved by policeman’s quick action
Published Date: 01 October 2007
A grandfather who was nearly killed in a road accident has been reunited with the policeman whose quick thinking saved his life.
Tony Dickens, 67, suffered severe head injuries and stopped breathing after his car collided with a parked lorry on the A45 in Northampton.
He says he owes his life to traffic officer Andy Griffiths, who rushed to the scene of the smash and used a breath testing tube to open Mr Dickens’ airway.
Mr Dickens, of Homestead Rise in Wootton, said: “I can’t recall much about the accident, but from what I can make out, if Pc Griffiths hadn’t have come when he did, I shouldn’t be here today.
“My injuries were so bad I was only given a five per cent chance of surviving after the crash, but I’ve lived to tell the tale and I’ve got him to thank for that.
“What he’s done is brilliant and he’s a real nice chap, the sort of person you dream about meeting.”
Mr Dickens, a lorry driver, was returning from his allotment in Collingtree when his Land Rover ploughed into the back of the foreign-owned truck, which had been inappropriately parked on the A45, close to the Wootton bridge in Northampton.
Pc Griffiths, who is a police driving instructor based at Mereway in Northampton, was first at the scene and discovered Mr Dickens inside the mangled wreckage of his vehicle.
He said: “I wouldn’t have believed there could be anybody alive in that Land Rover.
“The entire front end of the vehicle was underneath the lorry, right up to the cockpit, and it’s fair to say the fellow inside was virtually dead.”
Pc Griffiths fought his wayinto the driver’s cabin of the Land Rover, hauling its load of dozens of logs out of the way, and eventually became trapped himself.
Realising Mr Dickens was not breathing, he improvised a breathing tube from his breath testing kit and forced it into the driver’s mouth to keep him alive until paramedics arrived.
The pair were reunited at Friday’s Pride in Northamptonshire award ceremony at Wicksteed Park, Kettering, when Pc Griffiths was runner-up in the Courage Award for Outstanding Bravery, after being nominated by Mr Dickens and his family.
But the policeman, who lives with his wife in Cambridgeshire, said he was no hero and paid tribute to the courage of the man whose life he saved.
Pc Griffiths said: “The only hero is that old boy, who did everything he could to cling on to life.
“If it had happened to me, I don’t think I’d have survived. He’s got real strength of mind.”
