Miracle On The Interstate

As other drivers swerved to avoid an out-of-control car and then kept going, Mark Bartholomew noticed that the driver was alone and appeared to be unconscious.

Bartholomew used his truck to block and eventually stop the car. The driver is certain he saved her life.

"He was a lifesaver. I don't have a scratch on me," Elizabeth Driver said from her hospital bed Wednesday. "It's very surprising in this day and age that someone would come to the rescue and risk hurting themselves."

Driver, 58, had stomach pains before she passed out at the wheel Monday evening, and doctors at Lehigh Valley Hospital are awaiting test results on the cause.

As Driver's car repeatedly bounced off the interstate median, Bartholomew noticed the woman's head was bobbing up and down.

His first attempt to race past the car and box it in failed. On the second try, he pulled ahead, allowed Driver's front bumper to hit his vehicle and gradually slowed to a stop. Another motorist, a doctor, stayed with Driver until an ambulance arrived.

A state trooper who initially thought a chain-reaction crash had happened said he could not recall a similar act of roadside kindness. "That was a new one for me," Trooper John Carr said.

Bartholomew, 38, a demolition worker for Brandenburg Industrial Services of Bethlehem, said he doesn't worry about the vehicle damage.

"It's a company truck," he joked. "Besides, what's a vehicle compared to a life?"