Watch trooper pull man from vehicle at last second before train hits

Dash-cam footage from the Utah Highway Patrol shows a nail-biting close call in which an alert state trooper pulls an unconscious man from his SUV just before an oncoming commuter train plows into it and sweeps it off the tracks.

No one was injured in the incident, which took place early morning Wednesday in Davis County, just north of Salt Lake City.

Check out the amazing life-saving work by Trp. Correa this morning! pic.twitter.com/O6du6AN9Oo

— Utah Highway Patrol (@UTHighwayPatrol) October 16, 2019

Trooper Ruben Correa was on a traffic stop nearby on Interstate 15 when he received a call about a vehicle stopped on the northbound tracks of the FrontRunner, a commuter train serving the Salt Lake City region. The Salt Lake Tribune reports that the driver crashed through fencing on Interstate 15 near West Bountiful before coming to a stop on the tracks after suffering an unknown medical condition.

In the video, we see Correa scramble up the embankment to the stalled car, frantically trying to wake the man inside. “We gotta get out of here. We got a train comin!” he says, repeating the last line. The train’s horn gets louder and louder as it approaches. Correa manages to free the man in the nick of time.

“I think I got him out a second just before the collision,” Correa said later at a news conference. “So at that point, I actually wasn’t really thinking. I was just doing my job.”

The collision sent the vehicle, which appears to be a late ‘90s or early aught-model Honda CR-V, down the embankment. The video shows the train was able to come to a stop before it left the frame. The Utah Transit Authority, which operates FrontRunner, said the train operator activated the emergency braking system once he noticed the car on the tracks.

“In those 21 seconds the train slowed from 79 mph to approximately 30 mph,” Carl Arky, a UTA spokesman, told reporters in an email. “By being attentive and diligent, he slowed the train just enough to buy the trooper the few precious extra seconds needed to extricate the driver from the vehicle on the track.”

More remarkable images from this morning's rescue. pic.twitter.com/cHSdsULahs

— Utah Highway Patrol (@UTHighwayPatrol) October 16, 2019

“I’m still trying to process everything that happened,” Correa said, according to KSL.com. “I’m just very grateful that I was able to get him out and he’s alive and he’s back with his family now.”

The incident forced the temporary closure of part of the FrontRunner line as the UTA set up bus service between affected stations, as well as traffic delays from lane closures on I-15.

As at least one Twitter user noticed, the CR-V appears to have held up pretty well from the collision. Thankfully, the driver didn’t have to find that out firsthand.