One bad morning on a Brisbane road left Tyler Wiebe pinned under a car, struggling to breathe and convinced he was about to die. Weeks later, he got to thank the strangers who pulled the vehicle off him and, in his words, gave him a second chance.
Wiebe, a father of two, was riding to work in early June when a car travelling the wrong way hit the vehicle in front of him, causing him to fall from his motorcycle and become trapped beneath a car, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
“All of a sudden, [I] saw another car coming through traffic … like a fish trying to swim upstream, and it hit the car in front of me,” Wiebe said on A Current Affair. “So I got toppled over and was on the ground, and I just feel a car roll on top of me.”
Workers from Auto Request Kedron heard the crash and ran outside.
“I was in the office at the time, so I heard the bang [and] came running to the doors,” employee Mick said on the program.
“I realized there was someone trapped under the car,” fellow employee Rob said.
Corbin, another employee, said he saw only Wiebe’s legs under the vehicle.
“[I] saw Rob running and he was just whistling out saying, ‘Hey, boys, hurry up,’ ” Corbin said. “I remember seeing him, just like two legs. They weren’t moving at that time.”
The men first tried to lift the car but could not move it.
“We tried to lift it off. We couldn’t, and then second attempt, we had a couple of other good Samaritans come and help us,” Brian, another employee, said.
Wiebe said the pressure was so intense he could not breathe and his heart “couldn’t beat either.” He said he was bleeding from his eyes, mouth and nose while trapped under the car.
On the next attempt, the group lifted the roughly 3,300-pound, about 1,500-kilogram, vehicle high enough to pull him free.
“We just knew we had to get the car off,” Rob said. “We just sort of grabbed the spot and just lifted with all our might.”
“It’s something that you would do for anyone,” Corbin said.
Wiebe said he believes he had only seconds left.
“Honestly, I don’t think I had more than two more seconds,” he said. “It was all going black. You can only hold your breath for so long.”
He suffered broken ribs, a broken sternum and a collapsed lung.
“I couldn’t get a deep breath in,” Wiebe said. “I really believed I was going to die because of the collapsed lung in the ambulance. I remember them calling, ‘Stay with me, stay with me,’ and it was hard to stay with them.”
“And then in the operating room on the operating table I thought it was it,” he added.
The Auto Request Kedron workers later saw Wiebe thank them from his hospital bed during a television interview.
“I get more time with my daughters, I get more time with my family and a second lease on life, so just thank you, thank you,” he said.
At a recent reunion, Wiebe gave the men matching “Certified Legend” T-shirts featuring an illustration of a person lifting a car.
“You guys are legends, but now you’re certified legends,” he told them.
Wiebe, who is originally from Canada and became an Australian citizen in January, also said he will not ride a motorcycle again.
“Never again, unfortunately,” he said.
Wiebe said he believes the driver who caused the crash was feeling unwell and had passed out behind the wheel. Queensland Police did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment on the official cause of the incident.
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