An elderly man was left fearing he was having a heart attack after the bus he was travelling on careered into two gardens before colliding with a tree in Kingston.

Neighbours in Aragon Road rushed to the aid of 68-year-old Graham Power and his wife after the driver of the K5 bus seemed to lose control of the vehicle while speaking on her internal radio.

Asthma sufferer Mr Power, who drove buses himself for 33 years, was trapped for more than an hour waiting for an ambulance to arrive and had to use a brown paper bag full of cherries, which the couple had bought earlier in the day, as a makeshift breathing aid.

He said: "It's an experience I never want to repeat, and I've never seen anything like it in all my time driving buses.

"The driver was running late and was busy talking to the controller for quite a while trying to explain where she was when all of a sudden she swore and the bus took off.

"It looked to me like she'd put her foot on the throttle instead of the brake and had no control."

He said if the bus had not hit the tree it could have ended up in someone's living room.

A spokesman for Transdev refused to comment on the incident because an investigation was under way.

Mr Power's wife Sheila said nearby residents acted fantastically in the aftermath of the crash, tending to herself and her injured husband.

She said: "They did the job of the emergency services while we were waiting for them to arrive, calming us down and offering us warm clothes and cups of tea.

"Graham had to have his jumper cut off him to fit a neck brace before he was put on to a spinal board and a nice man offered us a coat without even expecting to get it back, and we didn't know him from Adam."

Mrs Power, who said she was still in shock, said she was surprised police took half an hour to arrive on the scene after the initial emergency call.

A spokesman for Kingston police said: "It is believed the bus driver lost control of the bus, however this is being investigated.

"Due to there being no serious injuries reported at the scene of the collision, the order of police attendance had to be prioritised."

A fire brigade spokesman said it got a call at 2.30pm, about 21 minutes after the crash, and was at the scene six minutes later. He said the brigade may only have been notified by other emergency services when required, hence the delay.