A BENDIGO woman has urged people to be vigilant about their surroundings after responding to a car crash that could have remained unnoticed until too late.
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Kim Wallis's actions drew praise from police after she was first on the scene at crash in Kennington on Thursday, which she noticed driving past.
Ms Wallis said she was making pharmacy deliveries on St Aidans Road when she saw a car a bit in front of her veer off to the left, she thought into a driveway.
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Driving past, she realised the car had hit a tree and was still running, with the front wheels spinning in the dirt. The driver was in the front, unconscious.
Ms Wallis said her brain went onto autopilot, responding instinctively to the situation. She called triple zero, while turning the car off and putting it into gear.
Despite being about 4.20pm on a normally busy road, Ms Wallis said no one else was around.
After Ms Wallis talked the operator through the situation, they told her to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
At that point, two police officers arrived on scene.
They were able to get the woman out of the car, and begin CPR.
Ms Wallis said she didn't administer CPR herself, but was able to relay instructions from the phone on speaker. Once the patient was stabilised by paramedics, she was taken to hospital.
Ms Wallis said it wasn't until afterwards that the situation hit her. It was when she called her work to explain her long absence that she got emotional.
"In some ways your brain's just going through the process, the step by step instructions, and you probably don't realise the severity. She was on the blink of not being here," Ms Wallis said.
"If I hadn't have been there at that split second when she did it, she would have been just parked there and passed away."
Ms Wallis said police and paramedics had done an amazing job on the scene. She said she was struck by just how much effort they went to to help the woman involved in the crash.
Ms Wallis said she would urge people to be aware of what went on around them in the community after the crash.
"If you see something that looks not quite right, or not normal, it doesn't hurt to stop and find out if people are okay," she said.
A woman in her 70s was taken to Bendigo hospital after the crash. She was later transferred to the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, where she remains in a critical but stable condition.
Police said on Thursday the were investigating whether the driver had suffered a medical episode before the crash.
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