‘I did what hopefully other people would do too’

It is Monday 11 November, a little after 10 AM. TU Delft security officer Tobias van Oort is cycling northwards from the Reactor Institute along the Schoemakerstraat. Just as he is cycling under the Kruithuisweg, he sees a grey Seat car taking the exit of the A13 at high speed. “I think he was driving 60 km/h, much too fast for that spot,” Van Oort immediately thinks. He talked about it a couple of days later on the telephone after a TU Delft spokesperson had given Delta a tip about his heroic deed.

A couple of seconds later, it becomes clear that the car was indeed driving too fast. Van Oort sees how the Seat shoots across the Schoemakerstraat, hits a pillar, and then drops into the wide ditch next to the sports fields of the Thor rugby club. The back of the car slowly starts to disappear under water.

Cold ditch

What do you do if you are a bystander and see something like this happen? Van Oort thinks that a lot of people would grab their phone to call 112 or to start filming. The security officer sees other car drivers stop and get out of their cars. He does not think twice. “I am a security officer and also work voluntarily for the fire brigade. I have experienced traffic accidents before,” he explains. So he cycles to the other side of the road, takes off his jacket and puts the things that need to stay dry in it. Then he walks into the water.

While he is wading through the cold ditch, he is thinking about who he will find. He sees an arm move behind the window – the driver is in any case still alive. Is there a passenger too? He calls out this question to the older man at the wheel. “I also wondered if he was injured. It was such an impact that he could have broken his legs.”

Before the driver answers, he opens his door. He can do so as the car is sinking at an angle. But Van Oort sees that the car immediately starts filling up with water. The man sounds scared and is talking very fast, saying that he is not injured. He says that he does have leg problems, but that this has been going on for a long time. Van Oort gets nervous when the man does not let himself be helped out immediately, but struggles for a while to free his leather briefcase from the seat belt in the passenger seat.

Once the bag is free, it turns out that the man is quite short. He cannot stand in the deepest part of the water. “He had to put his arm on my shoulders,” remembers Van Oort. “Luckily a lady came into the water too. She supported the man on the other side. And she spoke to him calmly.”

In the spotlight

Once out of the water, other bystanders help Van Oort and the woman to pull the man onto the dry bank. The police, fire brigade and ambulance have just arrived to take over the care. They thank Van Oort and the others. The emergency services say that not everyone would have done what they did.

After a hot shower in the Delft fire station and wearing the overalls of the former Chief Fire Officer who has just retired, Van Oort goes home on the orders of his employer, G4S. He heard that G4S and TU Delft will ‘put him in the spotlight’ on 28 November. Why did he do what he did, without knowing how it would end? “Several people have asked me that over the last few days. I tell them that if it were my father in that car, I would have been grateful if someone had helped him.”