Samaritans hailed a ‘lifeline’ after horrific Wick crash

Jon Stafford, 48, was riding his push bike from his work at HiTek Power Ltd, in Hawthorn Road, Wick, to his home in The Winter Knoll, on March 11, when a car knocked him off his bike, breaking his pelvis in two places.

The father-of-two was left needing emergency medical treatment and was only released from Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton, this week.

“When the car hit me I thought I was going to die,” he recounted. “It was a very hard impact and very fast.

“I didn’t think I was going to survive it.”

Mr Stafford described how when he was struck, he landed on the car’s bonnet, spun around and was knocked to the ground, rolling two or three times along the floor before he lost consciousness.

When he awoke, a team of bystanders was already giving him first aid.

He said: “There was a person next to me and I remember feeling very, very sleepy. But this woman was fantastic.

“She was asking me my name and told me she was an off-duty nurse. She was just brilliant.”

Mr Stafford, who at the time of the accident was covered in blood, said an off-duty police officer then joined the effort to help him.

“I think people like that, that put others first, are just amazing,” he added. “I know two of the people had been trained but I feel massively lucky they were in the same area.

“Everyone that stepped up to the plate like that was incredible. It meant so much to me to have a person there, talking to me – it was almost like a lifeline to me at that moment.”

Mr Stafford now faces a ‘painfully slow’ recovery full of physiotherapy until he is able to walk again.

A keen runner before the accident, he cites his fitness as one of the reasons he was not more seriously injured.

As well as thanking all the emergency services who helped him, Mr Stafford is also appealing for more investment to be made, nationally, in safer cycle routes for cyclists.