An off-duty ambulance technician tended to an injured man lying on a motorway slip road.

Chris Smith had just finished a 12-hour shift when he came across the scene on the southbound sliproad at junction nine of the M40 about midnight on Sunday.

A man was lying on the ground with two people crouched over him.

Mr Smith, 47, who had only been in the job three months, stopped his car and his training immediately kicked in.

He said: “It transpired that the young man lying on the floor had wandered onto the southbound slip road from the Bicester junction and had been hit by a passing motorist, who was one of the chaps crouching over him.”

Mr Smith, a former IT company boss, gave the 20-year-old, who was unconscious, basic first-aid, including making sure his airways were clear, and had to cut a holdall from his back to prevent spinal damage.

Mr Smith, who works for Emergency Response Services Ltd, a private ambulance service contracted to the NHS, said: “There were clearly visible traumatic injuries to his torso and face.

“I maintained his airway until the local ambulance crew arrived.”

A police spokesman confirmed the man, who was from the Coventry area and was taken to the John Radcliffe Hospital, was in collision with a Honda Civic car and had also suffered a broken leg, but his condition was improving.

They did not know why he was walking along the sliproad at that time of night.