If you happened to be driving down the Bayview extension at 3:15 last Thursday afternoon, you would have seen a strange sight.

A car came in from Rosedale Valley Road, then suddenly accelerated across the curb lane and the gravel shoulder, heading straight towards the Don Valley itself.

It plowed through the chain link fence that runs beside Bayview and took out an entire section of metal fencing that scraped the car like a badly peeled potato.

The car kept going down into a swampy depression in the valley and halfway up the steep embankment on the other side.

It came to rest at a precarious angle on the slope beside the valley’s railway tracks. Another few feet and the battered vehicle would have been laying on the tracks, waiting to be hit by a train.

Now, if you saw all that happen, you may have wondered, “What in the world is that driver thinking?”

The answer is he was not thinking at all. He was unconscious. I know. I was that driver.

If you’ve never passed out while driving, the experience is ... interesting.

One moment you’re tapping your fingers to an old Zeppelin tune on the radio, the next you feel like a computer shutting down, with your senses rapidly dwindling into a silent blackness.

The next thing I remember was being parked on a railway embankment with people shouting, “Are you okay?”

The answer, amazingly, was “yes.”

I managed to avoid other traffic and swerved right instead of left into the oncoming lanes.

I took out the fence in a middle section, missing the big metal posts on either side.

I went through the swampy ground at just the right angle to avoid rolling the car or nose-diving.

And I came to rest with the car keeled over, just short of flipping and having its front end on the railroad tracks.

Apparently, I’m one heck of a driver when I’m unconscious.

Several very nice people got wet feet racing to see if I was okay and called 911.

The EMS guy found my blood pressure too low to measure and my heart beating a mere 32 times per minute.

Rescuers had to wrench the passenger door almost off its hinges and maneuver me vertically out of the wreck.

I looked up to find myself surrounded by paramedics, ambulance staff, firefighters, police and a passing nurse.

“See how I bring people together?” I muttered before fading out again.

Several puzzling days at St. Michael’s Hospital followed, with a battery of tests showing my heart was strong. Yet I kept feeling dizzy and faint.

My vital signs were so good, one nurse asked me what I do for exercise. “Mostly typing,” I explained.

One doctor after another told me I was an “interesting” case, a code word for more tests.

Eventually, the trouble was tracked to the wiring of my heart.

Seems my cardiac nerves had an intermittent fault — a diagnosis confirmed when my right ventricle shut down for six seconds during a cardiac stress test.

Fortunately, it can be fixed with a pacemaker. No more dizzy spells or blackouts and I’m a step closer to my dream of becoming a bionic writer.

Kudos to the kind emergency personnel and passersby who helped me on the scene.

Thanks to Gerry, Steven, Michael, Blair, Haregu and the other angel nurses and staff at St. Mike’s.

Great appreciation to the team of doctors who solved me like a Sudoku puzzle (Bell, Mo, Dr. Oz, Halle Berry’s twin sister and the rest).

And eternal love to my family and great friends for their support.

Oh, and to the City of Toronto, sorry about the fence.

My insurance company will call yours.