A man seriously injured after his car collided with a bus has hailed the two heroes who rushed to his aid.
Don Marr was travelling home to Johnshaven when the accident happened as he came off the southbound A90 Aberdeen to Dundee slip road at Stonehaven.
His Skoda Insignia collided with the bus coming on to the A92 Stonehaven to Montrose road near the A957 Dunnottar to Stonehaven junction.
Mr Marr revealed last night he does not remember the crash itself – only the white of the airbag as it deployed.
The next thing he recalls is coming around to the words of RNLI teammates Steven Sinclair and Adam Howie.
The pair, who volunteer with the Stonehaven crew, witnessed the incident and stopped to help, keeping the 76-year-old conscious until the ambulance arrived.
Mr Marr, a retired coastguard and firefighter, said: “I don’t remember much.
“The ambulance and police hadn’t arrived and I couldn’t breathe. It was the two lads, they work for the council, that really helped me through.
“There was the explosion of the impact and the airbags came into action. When the airbags go off it hits you in the face and all of a sudden you can’t see anything but white.
“When I got my bag off all I could see was a white mist, it must have been from the bag itself. I managed to grab my keys and switch off the engine.
“After that the pain came and I was trying to get my breath. I was struggling for ages. These guys talking to me calmed me down a bit.”
He insisted Mr Howie and Mr Sinclair played a vital role as the nearest ambulance was half an hour away.
Mr Marr added: “They said ‘you’re all right’. They did all the checks, asked me where all my pains where and tried to stop me from dozing off. They were really good, they really done their job.
“They were keeping me going so I wasn’t going to drift off somewhere.”
When paramedics arrived, they raced Mr Marr to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, where doctors discovered he had broken his sternum, several broken ribs and damaged his spleen.
A blood clot also formed near his spleen, and he was kept in hospital for a week.
Every day tasks such as walking are still painful for him, but the pensioner has admitted the crash could have been much worse – especially if he had been travelling with a passenger, or had his dogs in the boot.
He added his wife Joyce had feared the worst when she got a call from police telling her the Royal Navy veteran had been involved in a crash on November 20.
Mr Marr, who is chairman of Benholm and Johnshaven Community Council, added: “I was very lucky. If I had a passenger with me, the passenger would have taken the impact. I had a tin of dog food in the back and it just burst.
“These two guys from the RNLI I have actually phoned up their headquarters and they have now phoned me back and asked how I was.
“I am going to go visit them when I am ready and thank them. These two lads knew their stuff.”
Last night a spokeswoman for the Stonehaven RNLI said: “We were very proud of Steven and Adam both.
“The skills they have learned through their RNLI training meant they were able to keep a calm head and assist with the casualty until emergency services arrived.”