An empty Arriva bus went seriously off route yesterday when it rolled down a road and crashed into the front door of a disused house seconds after the driver got out because he was feeling unwell.

He saw the driver looking really unwell by the side of the road and ran after the bus to try and stop it

The 45-year-old driver had stopped his bus, which was in service but was carrying no passengers, in Triq il-Gardiel, Marsascala. Witnesses told The Times he looked extremely pale and felt sick by the side of the road.

The vehicle, however, kept on going. It hit a pavement, crossed the road and crashed into a house owned by the Bonnici family.

On impact the vehicle’s mirror and windscreen were smashed and two large fissures opened up in the façade of the house stretching from the front door to the first floor. The structure seemed to have been pushed slightly to the left as slabs from a nearby low wall fell out of place.

Mary Joan Bonnici, 47, said she was out shopping in her hometown of Tarxien when she received an urgent phone call from her son who told her to call her brother urgently.

“They told me that a bus had crashed into my mother ’s house. I just dropped what I was doing and left,” she said.

When she and her husband arrived in front of her 82-year-old mother ’s house, they were shocked to see the side of a bus wedged into the front door.

“A person saw it happen ... He saw the driver looking really unwell by the side of the road and ran after the bus to try and stop it,” she said.

The house has been empty since 2005 after her mother moved out. A shaken Mrs Bonnici said: “God forbid she was still at home, or her sister, who used to love sitting outside on the doorstep when there was a bit of sunshine.”

The police were called in and the driver taken to a medical clinic. Two iron supports were installed to shore up the structure and the house was examined by experts appointed by the insurance company. An Arriva official picked up a pane of glass and the vehicle’s side mirror that had fallen off.