A man who was on his way to a job interview a week after being released from jail jumped off a city bus to save a car crash victim.

Aaron Tucker, from Bridgeport, Connecticut, was on the bus early in the morning on his way to the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que restaurant for his interview after being released from prison after serving almost two years in jail.

As the bus screeched to a halt at a stop, Mr Tucker noticed a car had hit a tree and flipped over.

The bus driver said he was not going to get out and help and that if Mr Tucker got off the bus, he would have to keep driving to complete his route.

Mr Tucker ran towards the vehicle which was gushing smoke and unbuckled the driver's seat belt to drag him away.

As it caught fire, nearby auto repair shop workers rushed over with a fire extinguisher while Mr Tucker kept the bleeding driver calm and covered the man's head wound with the shirt off his back.

"Your family wants to see you. Keep your eyes open," Mr Tucker reportedly kept saying to the driver, with whom he stayed until an ambulance came.

"I just wanted to make sure he was all right, and that's what I did," he said to WestportNow.com. Emergency personnel called him the "true hero".

Mr Tucker's job interview was a hugely important first step for his transition from prison into larger society, but he kept his perspective saying that "a job can come and go, but a life is one time thing".

He had left his halfway house with under $2 in his pocket that morning, but after hearing his story community members have rallied around the man trying to change his life for the better for his nearly two-year-old son and the boy's mother.

A crowdfunding page has raised over $50,000 in just a few days since the accident and Mr Tucker was given a suit by a local business owner as well as more than a few job offers.