Stock photo of a traffic jam. Credit : National Motor Museum/Heritage Images/Getty
Credit : National Motor Museum/Heritage Images/Getty
On a gridlocked stretch of the A27 near Chichester, what should have been just another miserable traffic jam turned into a small, rolling block party of relief. Two strangers stepped out of their cars and started handing bottled water and snacks through open windows, turning a line of stranded drivers into a chain of grateful smiles. Their simple decision to walk the tarmac with armfuls of supplies has now gone viral, and for once the internet is obsessing over something that feels genuinely kind.
The clip of the pair pacing between idling vehicles has bounced across social feeds precisely because it is so ordinary and so rare at the same time. Everyone knows the feeling of being stuck, hot, and helpless in standstill traffic, watching the fuel gauge and the clock. Far fewer people can say they have watched someone like Ollie Pulleyblank and his fellow helper quietly turn that frustration into a moment of shared care.
The traffic jam that turned into a lifeline
Drivers caught on the A27 near Chichester earlier this year were not just delayed, they were effectively parked on the highway with nowhere to go and no clear sense of how long they would be there. In that kind of standstill, tempers usually rise as quickly as the temperature inside a 2018 Ford Fiesta or a 2015 Volkswagen Golf with the air conditioning switched off to save fuel. Instead, two strangers decided to walk the line of vehicles, passing out water bottles and snacks to anyone who needed them, a moment captured in a viral video that showed how quickly a bleak situation can soften when someone chooses to help. That footage highlighted how the pair moved methodically from car to car, checking in on families, solo commuters, and older drivers who had been stuck for hours on the A27 near Chichester, and it is this scene that first drew attention to two Samaritans who refused to just sit and wait.
One of those helpers was identified as Ollie Pulleyblank, who has since been praised for his calm, almost matter of fact approach to what looked like a daunting task. Instead of treating the jam as someone else’s problem, he treated it like a neighborhood street where people might reasonably check on each other, even if those neighbors happened to be in a 2016 Nissan Qashqai or a 2020 Kia Sportage rather than behind garden fences. The video shows Ollie and his fellow volunteer weaving between wing mirrors and side doors, arms full of crisps and bottled water, a scene that echoed an earlier image of a man handing out to people stuck in traffic, suggesting that this kind of roadside generosity might be more common than it looks from behind a windscreen.
Inside the minds of the two Good Samaritans
Once the clip had raced around social media, the Two Good Samaritans behind it were tracked down and asked why they did it, and their answers were as understated as their actions. Speaking to local reporters, they played down any idea that they were heroes, describing themselves instead as ordinary people who happened to have access to supplies and a bit of energy to spare. One of them even joked that he was “purely the delivery man,” a line that stuck because it captured how casually he viewed his own role in a moment that clearly meant a lot to the people receiving help. That modest framing emerged when the Two Good Samaritans spoke to journalist Sam Morton, who detailed how one of them saw himself as simply moving items from one place to another rather than doing anything remarkable.
Another strand of their story came through when they reflected on what they hoped the video might achieve beyond a burst of likes and shares. One of the Good Samaritans said he wanted the images from the A27 to nudge others into similar acts, explaining that if people saw how easy it was to step up with a bag of snacks or a crate of water, they might be more inclined to do the same the next time they were stuck in a queue of cars. That hope, that a single clip could ripple outward into a wider culture of roadside kindness, was captured when the Two Good Samaritans told a regional outlet, “I hope it inspires people,” a sentiment later shared in coverage of the heartwarming A27 video that put their faces and names in front of a much larger audience.
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