Kambah man Grant Woodbridge was driving on Sulwood Drive in Kambah in 2013 when a stolen car drove through a give way sign and collided with another car.
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Mr Woodbridge, then 53-years-old, stopped to help the trapped driver of the Holden, with the driver of the stolen Ford fleeing the scene.
Despite the engine block of the Holden and the grass around it being on fire, Mr Woodbridge and another passer-by did their best to free the trapped driver before emergency services arrived.
On Monday, Mr Woodbridge, 58, will receive a commendation for bravery for his rescue efforts.
"I think what I did, any human would do. You're not going to watch someone die in a burning car are you?," Mr Woodbridge said.
A fellow passer-by, Dr David Brown, will also receive a commendation for his part in the rescue.
"I could not have done it on my own," Mr Woodbridge said.
The crash happened just in front of Mr Woodbridge, by the time he pulled up the Holden's engine was on fire.
He grabbed a doona to help smother the fire, before trying to the Holden's driver side door to help the trapped driver.
The door was pushed in, so Mr Woodbridge went through the passenger side door. He remembered his first aid training from his time as a boilermaker on Sydney's docks, keeping the unconscious driver's neck straight out of fear he'd damaged his neck.
He undid the driver's seatbelt and tried to free him from the car.
"I realised his legs were pinned in place. By the time all this was happening, the fire in the engine bay got a lot bigger," Mr Woodbridge said.
He got out of the car and began attempting to put the fire out by smothering it with his doona, burning himself in the process.
"I didn't feel a thing at the time," Mr Woodbridge said.
Another passer by gave Mr Woodbridge a fire extinguisher, which he emptied on the engine block, but the fire kept going.
He then poured water on the trapped driver's legs.
By this time Dr Brown climbed into the car to help support the trapped driver's neck despite the fuel line of the car now alight.
Emergency services finally arrived and extinguished the fire before freeing the trapped driver.
"I was so pleased he was alive," Mr Woodbridge said.
"It was only afterwards that I was quite shattered by the whole experience."
He said by this time the adrenalin had worn out and he had tears in his eyes and had realised he was burned himself.
The driver of the stolen Ford, Joshua Luke Winters, was sentenced to three years in jail in March 2013.
The driver of the Holden, a father, survived after spending 20 days in an intensive care unit after receiving a permanent brain injury, permanent scarring and burns across his body.
Mr Woodbridge still thinks about it at least once a day.
"I smile when I think about how those kids have their dad, so it's not all bad," he said.
