A Massachusetts ambulance driver narrowly avoided an overturning car while carrying a patient down a snowy road in a shocking moment captured on dash camera video.
On February 13, paramedic Tim Crosbie was transporting a patient on Interstate 95 in Peabody, approximately 20 miles from Boston.
Suddenly, a white sedan driven by a teenager came rolling down the road at breakneck speed.
“Obviously it happened fast, but it felt very slow,” Crosbie told CNN.
“And that’s what my partner and I were saying when we came back from the call we had made: it seemed like it was in slow motion.”
Massachusetts ambulance driver Tim Crosbie narrowly avoided an overturning car while transporting a patient on Interstate 95 in Peabody. As a white sedan moved down the road, Scobie was forced to quickly turn right to avoid it.
After checking that his partner and original patient were okay, Scobie tended to the 17-year-old driver until backup arrived.
The driver went over the median and crossed the southbound lanes, nearly hitting the ambulance on an otherwise empty road.
Speaking to FOX Weather, Crosbie said: “I had to make a split-second decision about which way to go, left or right.”
“And obviously I made the right decision to go to the right and avoid the car. Not much,” he added.
After checking that his partner and the patient in the back were okay, Crosbie repositioned the ambulance to avoid another accident.
He was surprised to find that he had easy access to the overturned vehicle and found that the driver, a 17-year-old, was alert and responsive.
‘The person in the car was awake and talking to me and, you know, he didn’t really have any visible injuries. And we were able to get him out of the car easily,” Scobie recalled.
He added that the boy was “very well.”
After a backup team arrived to care for the teenager, Crosbie’s partner, Tim Wareham, drove his original patient back to Boston.
Scobie’s employer, Cataldo Ambulance Services, praised his ability to remain calm under pressure and comply with safety standards.
‘I obviously made the right decision by going right and avoiding the car. Not by much,” Scobie said.
Cataldo Ambulance Services posted a message on Facebook praising its employees’ quick thinking and their ability to stay calm under pressure.
“This week, paramedic Tim Crosbie’s safe driving skills have been shown around the world,” Cataldo wrote.
“Tim’s incredible work was a great reminder that we should slow down, use caution when road conditions are not optimal, be aware of our surroundings and always wear our seat belts.”
Aside from the not-so-ideal weather, which was “a little humid, a little rainy,” Scobie said it was “basically a routine move to Boston.”
He noted that visibility was poor on the highway even though there was no significant rainfall.
Tuesday’s near miss came as a winter storm moved over Massachusetts and affected other parts of the state by several inches.
Several weather-related accidents were reported as snow fell.
On Route 2 in Westminster, a driver was sent to the hospital with serious injuries after an early morning collision.
A bus accident occurred on the Massachusetts Turnpike around 12:45 p.m.
Finally, a 20-year-old man was flown to UMass Memorial in Worcester after another driver rear-ended the dump truck he was driving while plowing the road.