In seconds, icy conditions turned I-75 into a skating rink.
Witnesses say a Cadillac was in the fast lane trying to slow down and steer right.
The driver lost control, swerving through all three lanes, spinning and slamming into a ditch wrong-side up.
Derek Sapikowski was behind him. "I didn't see him and his car until he got airborne over there," says Sapikowski, who was heading to Florida on vacation but something more important came up. "All the doors were jammed shut. That's what I was afraid of, that he'd be underwater."
Andy Pettit saw several spinouts on his way north from Flint to Saginaw, but he knew this was different. He got out of his semi-truck, jumping over the median, running through three lanes of traffic to help. "You've got do what you've got to do, you know," says Pettit, who says he hit the driver's side window around 60-times with a flashlight to break it open.
Others helped kick it in.
Strangers turned into teammates, rushing into the cold water, surrounding the vehicle, trying to get the driver out.
Within minutes, he emerges. He's cold, out of sorts, and in shock, but he hugs his rescuers as they pull him out of the ditch what could have been a watery grave.
"I just hope that if that happens to me someone does the same thing," says Pettit.
The driver has been taken to Covenant Healthcare to be checked out. He is expected to be okay.
