Thanks to hours of playing Mario Kart, 10-year-old Colorado boy drives family to safety

Good news, young gamers! Video games can save lives.

One youngster's love of Mario Kart helped equip him for a real-world highway emergency.

On July 26, Gryffin Sanders, 10, and his 4-year-old brother Ryder were riding down a Colorado highway in their great-grandmother Darlene Nestor's Buick sedan when "Grandma Great" passed out.

"My grandma great was talking about some of the wildlife and stuff about the Great Plains when she passed out in the middle of a sentence," Gryffin told ABCNews.com.

As the car continued to barrel down the highway, Gryffin tried in vain to shake her awake.

"My first thought was actually, is this a test or what?" he told 9News. "My heart was thumping."

Gryffin then grabbed the wheel and guided the speeding car to safety.

"I could see over the dashboard while I was driving, so I had an idea of where I was driving into. I couldn't get to the brakes because my grandma great was in the way," Gryffin told the Associated Press.

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He drove the car away from oncoming traffic, eventually driving onto the shoulder and into a muddy ditch. When Nestor's foot finally fell off the gas pedal, the vehicle came to a stop.

Little brother Ryder was playing video games in the backseat and didn't notice the ordeal in the front seat.

"I'm so proud of him that he saved so many lives that day even in oncoming traffic," Nestor, who is recovering from a minor heart attack, said. "He's always been a great kid."

“There could've been, you know, a travesty of an injury or even possibly a fatality," the boys' father, Sean Sanders, said. "The good news is we will never have to know."

"My mom actually told me after, 'I'm so glad that you turned into the ditch and didn't freak out like I would have," Gryffin told 9News. "I guess I just had the instincts not to."

Griffin credits hours of playing Mario Kart for being able to handle his great-grandmother's car.

"And I'm pretty good at go-kart driving," he added.

The humble kid asked ABC News to give some credit the good Samaritans, a husband and wife, who stopped to help them at the side of the road.

"His wife called 9-1-1 and two others helped get grandma great breathing again," said Gryffin.

The first responder on the scene was Gryffin's cousin, a sheriff's deputy, who awarded the 10-year-old boy a medal for his bravery.

"The proudest moment I think of this is he's been so humble about it," proud dad Sanders said. "There's nothing more I could ask of him."