Praise for Arriva Wales bus driver who showed ‘act of heroism’ in rescuing crash victim

An Arriva Wales bus driver has been commended for his involvement in rescuing a woman from a crash last month.

Muhammad Mubarqa, from Wrexham had been driving his route along the road towards Mold when the driver of a car tried to overtake both his bus and the car immediately behind him, whilst all three vehicles were approaching a bend.

Unfortunately, Jan Roberts was driving in the other direction at the time and collided head-on with the overtaking car, completely destroying the front and offside of her car.

Muhammad sharply applied the brakes and brought his bus and passengers to a stop, instructed them to stay on-board and rushed to assist Mrs Roberts.

After realising that Mrs Roberts was unable to get out of her vehicle, Muhammad called for police and an ambulance before beginning to assess her for injuries. Having determined, correctly, that Mrs Roberts had no head or limb injuries, and that the smoke in the vehicle was a result of her airbags exploding, Muhammad then prized the driver’s door open and escorted her to safety.

When the police arrived they had nothing but praise for Muhammad, and once the scene was cleared Muhammad got straight back on with his duties for the day.

Mrs Roberts later wrote to Muhammad’s General Manager, Gary Evans, saying: “I’m sending this email to express my deepest thanks and gratitude to your wonderful driver Muhammad who came to my rescue early this morning.

“As you probably know by now I was in a serious collision with a Porsche driver who recklessly overtook Muhammad’s bus directly into the path of my car. My car was a complete write-off and I’m lucky to be alive, as you can imagine I was in a state of shock and great distress.

“Muhammad was the most amazing and incredible person, I can’t tell you how grateful I am that he was there. He called the police, he came straight over to assist and reassure me, he took control of the situation calmly and efficiently whilst the police were on their way, and I even heard him check with his own passengers that everyone was unharmed.

“He thought of everyone and everything. I couldn’t have wished for a better person to have on the scene in such an awful situation. I truly can’t thank him enough.

“I want you to know how fortunate you are to have such a calm, confident, capable and caring person at Arriva, and what a huge credit Muhammad is to your company. My family and I are enormously grateful to him for his care and concern.

“If you have an employee recognition scheme then I hope with all my heart that you will see fit to put Muhammad forward and reward him for his service today to a lone female driver in a very dangerous and distressing situation. He was absolutely superb.”

To display their gratitude for Muhammad’s actions, on June 30th, the 1007 bus’ destination display was adorned with ‘Thank You Muhammad’, and a presentation was given to him by Arriva Buses Wales AMD, Michael Morton, and Operations Manager, Dan Hill.

Michael Morton said of Muhammad: “We are extremely blessed in Wales and North West England with a team of professional staff at all levels who create the successful business that we are.

“On some occasions, when it calls for it, members of our staff go above and beyond what we expect from them and we are absolutely proud of Muhammad, who is a credit to our company.”​