on Feb. 14, he made a wager with the emergency personnel working to free him.

The 54-year-old Parsons, Tenn., man bet them he wouldn't require surgery once they got him to the hospital. Rescuers were prepared for the worst and, in an unusual move, called in doctors, including a surgeon, to assist them at the crash scene.

That night, three of the folks who helped rescue Dyson visited him at Lehigh Valley Hospital in Salisbury Township. They told him, "You won your bet," he recalled in a phone call today.

They promised to pay the bet by taking Dyson to dinner the next time he's in the Lehigh Valley.

"They're great people," he said. "Everybody at the hospital was great, too."

He was released from the hospital Sunday and is at home recuperating.

Dyson said his legs are swollen, sore and blistered from antifreeze that spilled on them. He has scratches on his arm and bruises along his right side, but he can walk and doctors expect him to make a full recovery.

said

police Cpl. Michael Fritts, who is investigating the crash. Dyson, who said he was shocked by what he saw in photos of the collision's aftermath, agrees with that assessment.

"I think someone was watching over me," he said, noting that his wife had pinned a Saint Christopher medallion to his truck's sun visor. It's the first thing he remembers seeing after the crash.

Dyson said he was driving a tractor-trailer south on Route 309 when he ran a red light and struck a tractor-trailer turning left off West Saucon Valley Road onto Route 309 North. The other tractor-trailer's driver, 41-year-old Pavel Pilipchuk, of Clovis, Calif., was not injured in the wreck, which closed Route 309 for at least seven hours.

Dyson, who's been a truck driver for 16 years, said he saw the red light and Pilipchuk's truck, but hitting the brakes didn't work.

"There was nothing I could do. I was trying to stop, but it just kept going," he said.

"I'd just like everybody to know that I did not intentionally run that red light. I know that I went through the intersection, but it wasn't because I didn't try to stop."

Fritts said the crash is still under investigation, but preliminary findings indicate Dyson caused it by running the red light.

Dyson, who typically drives routes between Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas, has more than a million miles under his belt and described the Upper Saucon wreck as his first major accident.

He was hauling about 42,000 pounds of frozen breakfast food -- French toast, pancakes and waffles -- and running on schedule until the crash. "I had plenty of time. I wasn't being rushed or anything like that," Dyson said. "It was just one of them things."

Dyson has nothing but praise for the men and women who freed him. He said they arrived quickly, worked efficiently and talked him through the ordeal. Their questions about whether he was in pain prompted him to flash a thumbs up sign during the rescue.

"They did everything they could possibly do to get me out of there quickly," Dyson said. "They did a really superb job. I can't thank them enough."

Contact Lehigh County suburbs reporter Precious Petty at 484-894-3854 or ppetty@express-times.com.