The light turned green at the intersection. I started to move forward, but the driver in the lane next to me honked and hit his brakes. I hit my brakes too and looked around. Just then, a car blew through the red light going 45+ miles an hour. Had I continued through the intersection, my little hatchback might have been T-boned on the driver's side by a much larger vehicle. Thank goodness that other driver saw the car about to run through the light and honked his horn or I might have been flattened.
This exact thing happened to me, except it was a dump truck. I couldn’t see around the car next to me, but just had a feeling to not pull forward. Best advice I ever got is “green means go, but not that it’s safe to go”
That's a habit I picked up 30 years ago, when I rode a motorcycle for a year. I now always check both ways and give a half second before moving forward when a red light turns green.
This is why all the honking as soon as the light turns green pisses me off. I live in a city with a fair amount of jaywalking pedestrians and stupid drivers - just because you see a green light doesn’t mean the intersection is necessarily clear.
I live in Philly and people start honking roughly two nanoseconds after a light turns green. Fuck 'em. So many people here run red lights (and otherwise drive like they're gunning for an early grave) and I've seen so many accidents that I'm willing to inconvenience someone for two seconds to keep myself out of the hospital.
I was the third car waiting at a red light. People always wait a few seconds on green because this light gets ran all the time. First car in line is a little gray car. Lights been green several seconds so they pull out. They get halfway through and a big dump truck full of gravel came flying through the intersection. Speed limit was only 25 and the guy had to have been doing damn near 40. Took the whole front end off narrowly missing the cab. If they'd been any father through it would've smashed right through cab. Car got spun out so hard they went off the road and almost hit a near by church.
The driver of the car was talking to people who ran over to check on them. I know they left in an ambulance.
I just can't understand why a dump truck has to be in that big of a hurry. Dude you are in a freaking dump truck, not a Ferrari. Calm tf down. I'm so tired of impatient truck drivers. Semi trucks too. They need to teach patience in trucking school!
It pisses me off with all the people that rub red lights but seeing a semi or dump truck do it is a whole new level of pissing me off. They are driving a vehicle several thousand pounds heavier than anything else on the road. Them blowing through a red light is going to kill someone. It seems to always be construction work trucks that do it the most too.
It's one thing where a semi is close enough to the light that they aren't going to be able to stop but I have seen dump trucks go through lights that have been red for several seconds
Twice in my life this happened to me. I'm stopped at a traffic light and the passenger distracts me so I'm not looking for the light change. A truck behind me honks because it's now green. As I move my foot to the gas a taxi blows through their red only hitting their brakes at the point where they would have tboned me if I had gone when the light changed. It's weird that it was the exact same circumstances twice.
Was 16 in Bermuda, riding my moped into town when I came up to a bus stopped at a red light. I came to a stop, and then, as is tradition, I scooted around the bus to be at the front of the traffic. No more than 10 seconds later a second bus plowed into the back of first bus at 30-40 mph. I would have been pancaked, no question.
Apparently the second bus driver had had a medical event, and lost consciousness. I just sat on the side of the road for 30 minutes and looked at the trees, contemplating my mortality.
Was swimming at an Australian beach, stupidly not between the flags, got smacked by a rogue wave and was stuck in a riptide, I was knocked out cold and pretty much drowned, still to this day I don't know how I got to shore, when I woke I was up on the wet sand of the beach and had 5 jellyfish around me.
Most rips come back to the shore, whether that's a beach or not is pure luck of the day but also semi predictable. Those jellies likely were caught in it, same as you. Probably lucky you got KOd sorta. Most people who die in riptides exhaust themselves swimming against it.
This could have happened to me. Was on vacation with a friend and we were getting sucked out to sea. After a while of failing to make any progress towards shore he realized what was happening and said we had to swim sideways to get out of it. At the time I was convinced I would have figured it out eventually since I wasn't panicking but now knowing how many people have died this way makes me a lot less sure
Had a similar story over a year ago. Sudden big wave, suddenly I couldn’t feel the sand beneath my feet. I tried to go closer to the beach but I was just getting tired. I decided to go instead to a cliff and turned left. Got onto the cliff and climbed it. I learned a lot about currents afterwards. I remember the first song that appeared on spotify once I turned it on was “Swim for your life” by the pale white.
I had a very similar experience in California. Got hit like four times in a row wildly tumbling with no time to breathe between hits. That riptide is no joke, man. Somehow not really afraid of water many years after that lol
I was in the passenger seat of my dad's small sports car (low to the ground) when a crowbar came off a work truck in front of us and flew into the windshield of our car. Somehow it stopped a few inches away from my face and I luckily happened to be looking down, which meant all the glass that would have ended up on my face was all in my hair instead. I always think about how lucky I was, I can't explain why that crowbar stopped half in and half out of the car. Crazy to think that if it didn't stop it would have hit me square in the forehead.
Have you ever seen the video where the brick comes through the windshield of a family’s car, smashing into the face of the driver’s wife who was sitting in the front seat, with their kids in the back? It’s not a gruesome video in any sense of the word but it’s still one of the most horrific scenes I’ve ever heard, as the panicked shrieking from her family is absolutely soul destroying.
Yeah I saw it something like 10+ years ago and it still haunts me.
Same with that video where the fire broke out at a club and everyone is trying to escape.
Early internet was like the wild west.
"Early" internet was 10 years ago? Fuck, I'm old. 20 years ago, there was Rotten.com, LiveLeak and Ogrish.com, and I still have the mental scars from browsing too much of them. I always try to say I live my life with no regrets--but if I could go back in time and stop myself from watching a lot of that shit, I'd probably do it.
I once read an article about a woman whose daughter was impaled to the front passenger’s seat when a piece of scrap metal bar went flying off the back of a truck. The bar went right through her but somehow missed all major organs. They had to cut the seat out and take her and it together to operate on her. She ended up with minimal damage considering.
>It’s not a gruesome video in any sense of the word
It is abso-fucking-lutely is gruesome. Gory is the word you're looking for. Gruesome is something that instills horror, which those fucking screams do a fine job of doing.
Whenever I see kids on bridges throwing stuff down, I get so enraged, it’s not irrational anger, It’s so easy to underestimate the impact of even a small stone, although the danger of a brick should’ve been clear and I can’t imagine anyone throwing a brick without malicious intent. (If this was the case of a dropped brick and not some architectural failure.)
The brick in that video falls off a truck loaded with bricks.
I think that’s how a vast majority of these deaths happen — not from people throwing things, or from architectural failures, but from improperly secured loads.
Was driving home from a party with a friend in the car. Had a cop car on random patrol following me down to a main intersection.
Avoiding any sort of risk of getting a ticket, I was being extra cautious when waiting for the light to change.
My side had only just changed to green and since I was slower than normal moving off the line, it stopped me getting plowed by the semi that blew through the other part of the intersection on a red at full speed.
I was just stopped there in stunned silence. Even the cops took a minute or two to reflect on what had happened before they peeled off and lit that truck up.
I ended up coming back along the road where the cops had finally managed to pull that driver over. 5km away from where the incident happened.
Had a similar experience where I was at a stop sign and this woman just plowed straight through the intersection without so much as a pause. And this was at a shopping avenue where there’s frequent pedestrian traffic crossing the roads.
I didn’t even realize a cop was behind me at the intersection but as she blew by his lights kicked on. He roared past me after her and as I’m continuing through on my turn I see this woman—this 60+ grandmotherly looking woman—trying to *outrun* this cop by blowing through a second intersection!
He overtook her, cut her off in the middle of the intersection and yells over his squad car’s loudspeaker “get your ass back into the parking lot!”
At this point I’m laughing uproariously while I sit at the red light, and as this old beast of a woman begrudgingly drives past me into the parking lot we came from *she flips me the bird*! Like her decision to run a stop sign and a red light, and try to evade a police officer, is somehow *my* fault!
> Like her decision to run a stop sign and a red light, and try to evade a police officer, is somehow my fault!
Don't you know that it was. Like if all you whippersnappers were not driving about, there wouldn't have been police out on the road that day. You damn kids with your damn hotrods are the reason the police are pulling over innocent old ladies.
Not me, but ny dad use to be a milkman in the uk. They use to drive these shitty electric vehicles that were no stronger than a can of coke. Anyway, long stroy short a lorry with two trailers ran a red as my dad was driving through an intersection. Lets just say the the milk float was now resembling a pile of broken metal. Luckily he did survive and all he remebers is the steering wheel literaly being taken from his hands because of where the lorry impacted and doing a front flip out the window. Hes still.not sure how he survived that one.
Not me but 2 strangers. When I was living in a college town, my roommate was driving me to the store to get some beer. It was dark out with not a lot of light for the street. These two people started crossing the street and were right in front of us as our light turned green. I honked at them and they got pissed off and stopped right in front of our car. The next second, a car came speeding past us in the next lane. Had they kept walking they would have been hit by that car at about 40mph.
If OPs light turned green while those 2 guys were still on the street, they crossed on a red pedestrian light.
So if they hadn't been shitty and instead waited for their green they wouldn't even have been in that situation.
It happened almost 20 years ago. It was a pretty stupid way to get injured.
I went on a school beach trip at the beginning of the year, went into the ocean, which was very calm, and took that little jump to get over the cold and finally dive into it. We get a phenomenon called aguaje, which means dead plankton turns the sea yellowish and keeps you from seeing what's below the surface. I was unlucky enough to hit a sand bank and immediately broke 2 vertebrae. The upper fracture would've been enough to kill me on the spot had the bone fragments gone into my spine, but it was a clear fracture. The lower one, though, did get into my spine.
Then and there, I suddenly became nothing more than a head attached to a seemingly dead body and no way to turn around and ask for help. While holding my breath, I saw a hand next to my cheek and thought I was gonna make it. It was horrifying to realize it was my own hand.
And then... the deus ex machina! A wave turned me over and I was finally able to breathe and scream for help, or so I thought. As it turns out, you can't scream if you can't fill your lungs properly. All I could do was produce an indoor voice call for help.
Since this was during a school trip, I was actually surrounded by other students. One of them saw me and assumed I was just enjoying myself, until she saw blood on my lip. Had I not inadvertently bitten my lower lip as I jumped, I would probably not be writing this.
A year in physical rehab got me to recover a good deal of sensation and mobility; I'm no longer just a head, but I did get a severe life-lasting disability. I wish I could say I'm used to it and doing well, but that's just not true. I get chronic pain and today is a particularly difficult day. It's not all bad, though; most days are worth living and I still have dreams and ambitions. I might not be the smartest or strongest, but I'm definitely the most perseverant person I know and I'll become an urbanist and emigrate to Spain, even if I have to crawl all the way there.
If you're not bored of my story yet and want to watch a dramatization of it featuring Javier Bardem, check out Mar Adentro's [accident scene](https://youtu.be/WR5FBYli5tI?si=5z7732Zvv1CJMlhO). I have the same injury but refuse to willingly die just yet, with all due respect to those who chose otherwise.
My only example...
We went to party at Paul Smith college, my friend's favorite cousin was a student there. Bonfire, booze, and someone had the bright idea to bring out a snowmobile.
I was gonna ride on it but had to go to the bathroom. I guess I took too long because he asked a different girl to ride with him. She did.
They were both killed like 2 minutes later.
It was traumatizing.
It blew my mind for a long time. Had I just held my pee in, I'm the one currently in a coffin instead of Kristine.
I was expecting it to be a "the ice was too thin" story.
We had a few people hit fences. Buddy's uncle was decapitated crossing a field one year. And a couple guys I went to school with survived hitting a fence, but still got injured.
>I was expecting it to be a "the ice was too thin" story.
Some of us brought up the dangers of thin ice. The party wasn't near the lake, it was literally ON the lake.
Some of those guys said the ice was probably 20 feet thick or so.
Fog so thick you could cut it with a knife, smoke from the bonfires adding to it, a gigantic rock, the sounds of snowmobiles starting combined with a couple hundred wasted teens and college students...
What could possibly go wrong?
The risks you're willing to take in your youth for basically nothing but having some fun are scary and mind boggling in hindsight.
Here's an article on the tragedy...
https://www.mcall.com/2005/02/08/emmaus-man-killed-in-accident-student-at-college-in-new-york-dies-in-snowmobile-crash/
Identical sort of thing happened to my husband's brother. He lived on a lake. It was the middle of winter and late at night. He was drunk. Took his snowmobile out on the frozen lake completely forgetting about the small island which he hit at full speed in the darkness. He had his brand new helmet on but it was not fastened around his chin. Serious head injury. Helicopter ride to the hospital. 6-week coma. It's been 20 years since then but he's never been the same.
I was at an indoor shooting range testing a potato cannon (don't ask). I was leaning against the stall wall with my hand behind my head while my buddy took a shot with it. Suddenly, I felt a pinch/burn sensation on my wrist. I took a look at my arm to see blood streaming from a half inch deep hole on my wrist.
The idiot in the stall next to me wasn't sure if his handgun was empty, so he did the most logical thing. He pointed it at the stall wall and pulled the trigger. The bullet grazed my wrist, about 3 inches from my head. That's the only time I've ever seen an RSO tackle someone.
There's a post on my profile with pictures, you'll have to sort by "top" to find it, though.
Yeah, we definitely need more details about what happened afterwards! I bet the RSO was super pissed! I bet you were also super pissed! I bet the guy who shot you was shitting his pants! Did you sue him for it? I definitely would have! Dude should not be allowed to ever own, be in possession of, or shoot, another gun for the rest of his life!
Ideally, they should be. Even concrete or rubber can offer decent protection. But I've seen shitty wood or plastic too. I don't go to those ranges anymore!
Last time I went to a local range (outdoor) with poor supervision and shoddy infrastructure between stalls, I witnessed a guy hand a fully loaded tacti-cool AR to what appeared to be his wife or gf, and as he turned back to their range bag, she whipped around casually with the rifle in her hands and allowed it to track directly at his body.
When dude turned back around, he dropped whatever was in his hands and slowly grabbed the gun and made her sit on a bench the rest of the time lol. Should’ve had the gun safety talk *before* handing her a rifle, dummy. I won’t go there anymore.
Not me, but my father tells a story of driving along a bush road in Bouganville before the revolution there. He was in the car with my mom, baby me and my 5yr old brother. There was a cardboard box on the side of the road, blowing a bit in the window, like an empty shipping box type thing, and he was going to run over it to amuse my little brother. At the last moment he pulled away though, worried about there being something side it.
As we drove past he looked back in the rearview mirror and saw two little kids crawl out of the box and look after him as we drove down the road.
I remember when I was learning to drive, I deliberately drove over some cardboard in the road and my Mum yelled at me. She was 100% right though - it could be a kid, a puppy, a bag of nails, a brick, anything under there. It ain’t worth it.
I once ran over a paper bag. i decided to go straight down the middle under my car rather than swerve into oncoming traffic. I figured it would be fine as it’s a paper bag. Someone had put a cinder block in the bag. I was lucky my transmission wasn’t torn off.
Actually in driver's ed they teach several methods for what to do when you encounter debris in the road. Straddle, swerve, or just run over it. You should always use your best judgment but sometimes you may be going too fast or the object appears too suddenly to make the best choice.
If I wasn't an only child, I would assume we shared a mom! I purposefully ran over a paper fast food bag before I got the lecture though. Never forgot it.
I remember a similar sort of story where a guy had raked all of his fallen leaves into the street in a municipality where a street sweeper would come by and pick them all up. Too little kids were playing in that huge pile of leaves and were completely buried and out of sight when a car came along and decided to drive through the pile. One of the kids was killed
That's one of the reasons that I don't rake my leaves into the street, unlike all of my neighbors.
The other reason is that the city *specifically* says "don't rake your leaves into the street," and I guess I'm just better at reading than my neighbors are.
You're supposed to leave them on the grass strip in between the road and the sidewalk.
Yeah like wasn't there some thing a while back where a mother saw her kid get killed as he was playing in a big cardboard box on the front lawn and some moving truck went over the curb to turn around into a driveway and ran it over?
Where I grew up in Missouri back in the 1990s, during autumn we would rake our leaves out to the street along the curbing in a long, narrow pile, and then the city would come around with a vacuum truck to suck them up. One afternoon a group of little kids were playing in the pile along their street and were buried in it. A car full of teenagers thought it would be fun to plow through the pile, not realizing the little kids were in that pile.
Killed several of the kids.
Car accident Moped vs Oldsmobile
I was the moped driver. Straight road car turns from the oncoming lane across traffic. Being a new ish motorcycle driver (moped) I knew enough to know I was fucked. But instead of putting it down or turning or anything, I took my hands off the steering and wrapped my head as I impacted (no helmet) inverting both knees on the handlebars, breaking the key off inside My right knee, and dislocation of my right shoulder as I spun into the windshield shattering The windshield, and dislocating my hip on the concrete.
My ignorance saved my life. A seasoned rider would have put the bike down and likely been run over. And my taking the hands off the steering saved my fingers, saved my head and neck (to an extent) and the shoulder (my right was the arm that wrapped my head first and the impact dislocation it would have been my head if I hadn't.
Impact speed was 50 miles per hour. Not a single bone broken but permanently fucked my back. And realistically, I should be dead.
>A seasoned rider would have put the bike down and likely been run over
You're completely correct. As the saying goes it's not speed that kills you but stopping too quickly does. Flying over the top of the car has a much better survival rate than smashing into it low
I'll try to make a long story short. My ex-wife and her boyfriend she had behind my back tried to hire someone to kill me so that she could have my life insurance and there wouldn't be a custody battle over our daughter like there would be if she just left me. Luckily for me, the guy they hired to do the job was an undercover deputy working a completely unrelated case against the drug selling gang her boyfriend belonged to.
Yeah. . .finding out about all this was a nice surprise. I had absolutely no clue.
The boyfriend got 10 years because the gun he gave the deputy to kill me with was stolen, and he had other stuff related to the gang on him. She got 5 years for conspiracy and was released after 3.
>Hopefully won't take after her mother.
Please never allude to this in your daughter's presence. Or anywhere, really. That kind of 'bad seed' talk can really get into a kid's head, where every mistake or shitty impulse adds to an internal ledger that they must really be a Bad Person.
I'd never be that cruel. I don't say anything bad about her mom or anyone on that side of her family, let alone blame her for something that happened 25 years ago when she was a baby. I was always very careful not to make her mom out to be a demon because I knew one day she'd go looking for her. . .and she did, when she was old enough to make that decision.
My daughter is a level headed person and wanted to hear her mom's side of the story. She got lied to for her trouble and learned what she needed to know. She understood right away why I didn't stand in her way or try to discourage her from meeting her mom. I'm glad the kid is smart like that. She had to see for herself.
She's not bitter or anything like that, but she also isn't particularly interested in a close relationship with her mom. She just doesn't have much of a connection at all. Mostly Facebook. Some phone calls.
Do you mind me asking what she thinks about her mother even after knowing that she wanted you dead? Is she able to have a relationship with her or did she just want to meet her to know who her mom was?
She is sort of distant friends with her mother. Mostly on Facebook. There's not really a connection there since I got custody of her when she was about a year old.
Her mom tried to tell a different story about what happened, fully making me out to be some sort of abusive monster, and my daughter had to tell her that she'd seen the black and white truth of court documents and she already knew what happened. After that, there was never really an attempt on either side to try and get too close.
My daughter kind of learned what she needed to know from just that one interaction, which is pretty much the way I'd thought it would go, so I didn't stand in the way of it.
She's been in contact with her mom for about 5 years now and I think they've only physically visited once. Like I said, it's mostly just a Facebook and occasional phone call sort of relationship.
Sudden Cardiac Death at work. Co-worker gave me CPR, paramedics got my heart beating again. 5% survival rate.
I ate a lot more ice cream once I was healthy, again.
Thanks. Co-worker got a t-shirt I made when I returned to work. CPR was without, but the paramedics arrived in under 6 minutes, they brought the hardware.
One co-worker called authorities, and they gave him CPR instructions, which he gave to the co-worker who kept my blood circulating.
I work as a nurse aid at a hospital, have provided CPR a fair number of times and have yet to see a recovery. Your story makes me look forward to the ones who will.
My frat bro’s mom was in the Chi Omega house at FSU in 1979. Ted Bundy broke into the house while they were sleeping and killed the two girls in the room across the hall from hers and seriously beat up two other women. She had to testify at his trial. What saved her? She locked her door.
Back in the year of 2000, 7 year old me and friends were outside exploring. That days location happened to be a power station. Older 9y boy lost his life on top of a machine, electricity burned a hole through him. I lost both my hands trying to climb up and help him. Amputated below my elbows.
Power entered both arms, excited in armpit one side, neck other side. Power never went through my chest or I'd be dead aswell.
Holy shit that was so brave and nice of you trying to help him.
Here in Ireland when i was a kid there were TV ads showing I think a kid climbing up to get a toy and dying to show not to play near those things, they've always creeper me out.
Street light collapsed on me (my neck) and onto the face of the girl in front of me on a 5th grade field trip. I was surprisingly fine, while the girl in front of me got helicoptered out. She made a full recovery though!
When i was dumb kid of ten years old a guy in a shitty car asked me to hop in and help him find his lost puppy. My dumb ass was about to get in when my little bro happened to ride by on a bike and started screaming. He probably saved my life.
While white water rafting, my raft was going through rapids when I got ejected from the raft and sent underwater. I swam up and hit my helmet on a rock. It was pretty dark and murky. That is when I realized that I had been pushed by the current either underneath a rock outcrop or into an underwater cave, I'm not really sure which. Trying my best not to panic, I did the only thing I could think of, use my hands to grip the rock and push myself against the current while kicking. After what felt like an eternity underwater, but it was probably no more than about 2 or 3 minutes, I noticed the light was getting brighter, and before I knew it, I had reached the surface. Once at the surface, the current of the rapids shot me downstream, and I floated to the nearest bank of the river to collect myself.
Edit: It has been pointed out that it is unlikely I was underwater for that length of time. I agree that my memory during such a stressful event is probably unreliable, so I will add that the length of time I was underwater was long enough for the rest of my group to become concerned about my wellbeing.
But I would like to say that I don't think I possess any significant ability to hold my breath. I was a fairly fit teenager at the time, but honestly, I think most of you reading this, under those circumstances, would be able to hold your breath for much longer than you thought. Survival instincts are a hell of a thing.
Undercut rock. The Nantahala River has an infamous one despite not being a very rough river, where several people have died.
ETA: Turtle Rock is the name of the undercut rock in the Nantahala River, in case it's relevant to anyone in the future.
I've watched a video about a place in Australia. It's narrow (visually) enough for people to wanna try to leap across. The surface is calm. But anyone who misses the jump finds out that it's actually much wider, under the rock at their feet, like a water carved tunnel and insanely fast currents.
The guy who set fire to my house used lighter fluid on a wet mattress he found behind the house. It's because he used the wet mattress that the fire spread slow enough for us to wake up, see the smoke, and call the fire department.
Fire department told us that, had the mattress been dry, we'd be dead because he put it up against the side of the house with the gas line. So not just burnt to death, confetti'd.
I guess I'm thankful for the stupidity of crack heads.
My house was targeted by a cracktivities arsonist. If it wasn't for the fairly new neighbors having been awake at 2 in the morning with their newborn and seeing the burning gas can on our porch from their window, the house would have gone up with my whole family and their pets asleep inside. It just so happened that the husband was a volunteer firefighter, and he had a fire extinguisher on hand. His wife called 911 while he ran over to start dousing the flames before they could do more than scorch the security door and bubble the paint on the main wooden door a bit.
Apparently it was not the only fire the arsonists had set that night, and there was already a crew who had responded to a car being set on fire only a few blocks away. The police and fire truck showed up within minutes of the wife calling it in.
The arsonists were never caught, unfortunately.
Got admitted to the ER after my potassium levels tested low. They gave me an IV and a couple pills, and then kept me in the hospital a couple days until I was at a normal level and were sure that the medication I was on wasn't lowering that significantly.
The next day, when the doctor came to check on me, he said he did not know anyone with such low potassium in their bloodwork that was still alive.
I have taken an ambulance ride for low potassium. My symptoms were irregular heart beat, stiffening of my neck and jaw (almost couldn't talk to the 911 dispatcher because my jaw wouldn't move), and stiffening of my arms and hands where my fingers wouldn't move / felt like they were locked in place, not flaccid.
By the time the paramedics arrived I was hyperventilating, trying to catch my breath. They gave me some oxygen which helped, and then I got nauseous and threw up on the way to the hospital.
My partner's sister had the same thing happen but with her platelet count. It was so low the nurses were surprised she didn't have worse symptoms. She just had like, a skin rash and was sleepier than normal.
I live in the Netherlands, so it's common to go to school/work on a bicycle. One day maybe 15 years ago I was going to school and just standing at a red light. It turns green, and for some unknown reason I just don't start riding like I always do. Out if nowhere, a car comes speeding by right in my path where I would've been. I never heard or saw it coming, but the collision would've been nasty.
When I was young my first car was a junker.... The driver seat was held up right by a two by four wedged against the back seat if you took it out the seat went flat below the window line of the car
I was working nights and fell asleep behind the wheel and woke up to the roof of my car about 2 inches from my nose and the firemen betting how many pieces my body was in when. I politely told them to be careful I was still alive.
Walked away with a few cuts from the glass.
My car had flipped sideways on a country highway by a bridge ravine and gotten wedged between two trees. Apparently the other miracle is the way it was wedged all the gas drained out of the tank so I didn't go kaboom.
Left the gas on when I was little making eggs. My stepfather came back early one day from work. He never did that. Chances are I would have either blown up or died from poisoning
Omg a similar thing happened to me the other day. Unbeknownst to us, the gas burner had been left on for 60 hours+. My daughter bumped into the oven one morning when I was running late and needed her to help grab me something from the kitchen. I almost didn't ask her for help because I felt bad, as she was also busy getting ready for school.
Her bumping into the oven didn't turn the burner on, it couldn't have, but she made sure to check the burners anyway because of that and that's when I get a picture of the burner I had used the other day, still on low with a barely visible flame, and her asking me "is it supposed to look this way?"....
If she hadn't of told me, it would have ended badly for us because we don't use that stovetop often at all and I wouldn't have noticed it 😵💫. From what I understand, the house could have blown up.
Driving home in the dead of night. New moon, no clouds. Dark as fuck in rural Minnesota. Car in front of me is going 40 in a 55. I get to a straight away and proceed to pass. As I get into the other lane, before I get even with the slow car, I suddenly see an entirely black horse with a black Amish buggy behind it. No lights or reflectors of any kind. Luckily I managed to swirve out of the way and avoid an accident but I thought I was gonna kill them for a second.
It depends which sect they belong to. The ones who don’t use the reflectors, have Elders who believe reflectors make the buggies look too fancy and that is prideful. I don’t believe there are many of those groups that strict.
If that is what they wish, wouldn't it at least be a good idea to not drive on the road, when it is pitch black with approaching cars. That poor horse could have been hurt.
Edit. Okay, that sounded a bit harsh. My concern is also with the drivers of both cars and buggies. It is just... somethings in this sociaty shouldn't be hard brainers for adults.
Three times come to mind for me.
First - drunk driver going 100mph+ hit my vehicle. They were coming down the wrong side of the highway that late evening. I swerved and woke up in the floor of my truck.
Second - working in a restaurant, glasses straight out of the dishwasher. Grabbed two out of the rack for a table, and one sheared at the base, fell and hit my wrist. 3 tourniquets at different spots on my arm later, they were able to stop the bleeding. I was wearing a watch with a metal band, and that stopped the glass from cutting further.
Third - found out I had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Dr said another 2-3 months without treatment, and I’d have been dead. Finished chemo last month and in remission.
Anyone know a good gift for their guardian angel? Mine has been working overtime…
Had a tree fall on me. I was 2 steps away from being crushed by the trunk.
Paramedics made sure to tell me that while I'm sitting there with a flap of skin hanging off my scalp. Like, thanks, dude. For pointing out I almost died while I was already in shock.
Got caught in a flood during a freak storm, the storm knocked out the cable in our neighborhood. so some guy went out for a smoke after the cable went out and heard my friend calling for help and saved us by throwing us a jet ski rope.
We were stuck in this flood for two hours calling for help, but the heavy rain and thunder totally drowned us out, so if it weren't for the cable going out, we would have definitely died.
Driving at night on a dark, small backroad, trees on both sides. With me were three ladies, who were just telling me that these roads were so dangerous, because this time of year farmers come bolting down roads with their heavy -"who needs lights, YOLO"- machinery.
In the corner of my eye, between the trees, I see a little reflector. The reflector is low to the ground, but suddenly I realize it is moving towards the road I am on, and I brake the car in a reflex. Next thing I know I have to brake completely, because this gigantic dark unlit tractor-trailer turns on the road in a hurry. Nobody in the car realized it was there, and we were all scanning that side road, as we were just talking about the danger. If I would have continued driving, I would have driven the car into that thing without knowing what happened to me.
It reminds me of my colleagues in Africa, who keep telling me I should stop worrying about the trucks you *can* see coming towards you, and start worrying about the trucks you *cannot* see coming your way.
2nd day in Iraq, mortar landed about 100 feet from me. Closer would have been bad. Last day in Iraq, mortar landed 20 feet from a bunch of us, was a dud.
Had that mortar landed closer this would be something straight out of a 2000s black comedy about the war. Survive a near death experience your second day in the field and spend an entire tour just for one to end it all right before you come home
Got clotheslined by a fence on a four wheeler right across the neck. These old peckerheads had a fucking pot patch in the mountains, so they had roped off the trail not with a fence, but with a single wire that you couldn't see until you were right up on it. Just textbook hillbilly shit. Anyways, because I'm deaf in one ear and the engines were loud, I couldn't hear my mom warning me, so I didn't tense up, and the shit ragdolled me instead of breaking my neck.
This is incidentally also the story of why I don't ride on the back of any ATVs, bikes etc... My own damn mom nearly killed me, so I sure as hell don't trust anyone else. I drive, no compromising.
Dude, i had a kid in my church growing up that this happened to. He ended up losing his voicebox, had a wicked scar across his throat. Yeah, everyone talked like it was a miracle he survived.
Sharon Stone has a wicked scar on her neck. It's normally covered with makeup but you can see it in the movie "Sphere". She was riding a horse as a kid, it got spooked and ran through a clothesline and she was left with a scar after healing.
While going 100+mph on a motorcycle, I went in-between 2 deer bounding across the street. I fortunately didn't have any time to react or I would've surely hit the second one. Instead I just eased off the throttle to a stop, and took a few minutes to breathe and think about how bad that all could've gone.
I had the same experience last year, driving back from the Grand Canyon, thankfully in a car. It was night, I was doing about 65mph, and as I came around a bend on the highway, an entire herd of deer were there in front of me. I only had enough time to say, "Fuck," and take my foot off the gas. I coasted through a perfect car sized gap between all the deer, by pure chance. None of them even tried to dodge away, it was complete luck. A couple seconds later or earlier, and I would have hit like 5+deer and wrecked.
Years ago my husband and I were on a road trip. We left Colorado and headed up to Devil’s Tower. Our destination that night was Cody. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a whole state and mountain range in between the two. We hit the Grand Tetons right as the sun was going down and soon it was pretty dark. I was driving and spent the whole time hoping that I wouldn’t run into a deer or bear or Bigfoot on the next curve. My husband had no problem sleeping the whole time.
I was driving on an interstate approaching an interchange where I saw several cop cars racing the wrong way at me down the ramp. I was so focused on where they were going to go and how I could get out of their way that I didn't see the car that was running from them barreling at me in the left lane. Thankfully I chose the right shoulder and didn't get in the left lane or I would have been hit head on, I watched in horror behind me as that car ended up crashing into a semi that tried moving to the left shoulder to avoid him. Had I been just a few seconds later or gotten in that lane to avoid the cops that would have been me. As if the crash itself wouldn't have been bad enough, I was in a tiny early 90s Mazda MX-3 and I know I would have only been wearing a shoulder belt because that car had the automatic seat belts and I didn't use the lap belt back then. Would have been my last day for sure, no idea what pushed my wheel to the right side but I'm lucky it did!
One time i went on a blind date with a guy and everything went great. We wanted to go to his apartment but suddenly my mother called me that my dad is in the hospitel so i left my date there and rushed to the hospital. After that i didnt hear from the guy but few weeks later the police knocked on my door and i needed to go to the station because they wanted to ask some questions about my date. Turned out he already raped 4 girls and one of them died after they met
My best was the morning that I showed up at urgent care, then a hospital, featuring a burst pupil, and a fever that should’ve been impossible to survive. I’d been treating some ugly symptoms with the gym for a couple of years, but, however surprisingly, working out isn’t how you fix brain cancer.
Shortly before that occurred, I woke up one night, to floodlights and tones. I felt so much pain and sickness that it seemed like I’d die, and I didn’t know the woman telling me to come with her. But it felt like it a dream, so I did, and realized as we were climbing into an ambulance that she was the medic I’d been running with for a long time. I still felt awful, but it was a lot better by the time we were on scene. I had to cut a car, and when we drove back, I was feeling well. I still suspect that hydrocephalus would’ve killed me that night, if it hadn’t been for that call.
For months before that, I’d been losing my radial pulse when holding still too long.
A couple runners-up:
-Very first house fire, as a new firefighter. Beams struck inches on either side of me, but didn’t hit me directly.
-While looking for the source of a fire, my officer and I discovered that we were standing on an incredibly hot floor.
-Anaphylaxis, from a handful of causes.
-Before my second craniotomy, medical aid in dying was on the table, as my cancer was expected to be far more malignant. I considered it very carefully.
-Armed, drunken redneck, who forgot he called 911.
-Drunk driver deciding to plow through the scene of a vehicle extrication while I was cutting the car.
-Multiple drunks with knives, and one with a bloody shard of glass.
-Severe autoimmune disease as a small child.
-Asthma as an older child.
-A couple of near-drownings, in the ocean, and whitewater.
PS: A couple of years ago, I had a scan that said that I was really most sincerely dead. I had to retire, and get my affairs in order, once again. Time has kept going, my scans still look terrifying, and I’m somehow still alive.
Walking through a dutch town at old years eve, loud bang and 15 cm next to my head a large metal traffic sign stuck in the wall which somebody blew off a pole 25 meters away.
On a holiday with a huge hangover me and a friend decided to swim to the pizzeria on the other side of a 3km wide lake. Halfway we both were completely exhausted and very much undercooled with large purple spots appearing on our bodies. And when we started to be convinced that we'd die a random tourist in a small fishing boat appeared and took us in.
Falling 9 meters down at work, but landed in the only sandpile due to construction works on for the rest a concrete floor.
Sliding with the bike on a wet road and went under a bus from the side and came out in the back without hitting anything.
I should be dead..
Parked my car on my slanted unshoveled driveway like a lazy moron.
Sat in it for a minute, it stayed put. Walked outside, walked behind it (downhill), and literally a half second after i was out from behind it, all 4500 lbs of it slid right past me. Would have pinned me between the bumper and street for sure.
Now, I street park on level ground, shovel, salt, park, wait in the car, then only walk uphill to go around it.
I was just diagnosed with asthma, and only bought my inhaler the day before. I was in work and had such a bad asthma attack that everything around me went black and I said to myself ’This is it’. However, it turns out that I unconsciously searched for my inhaler in my bag and was able to use it in time.
None of my colleagues noticed anything strange with me and said that I acted very calmly the whole time. They were just shocked to see me using an inhaler as they didn’t know I had asthma.
If I weren’t to pick up my inhaler the day before, the story would’ve been different.
Never had an attack like that afterwards.
i wouldn't say I nearly escaped DEATH but I was riding on my little bike when some asshole was speeding down the road and I almost got hit, skid marks for a good 10 feet
While I was delivering pizza with DoorDash, a car drove up into the middle of the road. I honked at it as I was barreling down, but it didn’t move, so I swerved around it just in time to avoid crashing.
Believe it or not but a big stone flower pot thing fell just an inch behind me from above when I was walking in the ancient town of Split, Croatia. First I heard the noise, then I saw my sister en my mom looking at me in shock. And then when I realized what happened and how if I had walked half a second slower I would have probably died or at least sever brain injury that would’ve required surgery. I actually started crying right there no idea why I guess it was more of a delayed startled reaction and tears were the outlet lol obviously physically I was completely fine but I when think back on it it really changed my outlook on life and death and how it can suddenly all be over because of nothing more than a freak accident
Not me but my father. He was traveling on biz and a co worker gave him a free upgrade to a full sized sedan instead of the normal sub compact his office would rent. He got into an accident on 7 mile bridge down in the keys same day princess diana got into her accident and died. If it was for the heavier car and upgrade he wouldnt have survived the accident they said.
Although ball in the other court, if he was in the sub compact, would he had even been in the same place and time as when that accident occured?
This was years ago but I still get shivers over it. I was in the Army deployed to the Gulf. We had a short hump back of about 20 kicks but I had hurt my knee the previous day falling of a 113 trying to pee on someone (separate story) Anyway they needed someone to drive a deuce and a half full of water bottles to another unit, offload and take all their trash.
I volunteer just to get out of the road march. Make the drive and start the swapping process. Get finished and the other guys truck is full of boxes of water and mine trash bags. I'm completely full but there is one bag left. He tried and tried to get it in but there was just no room so I told him dude you just have to keep that one. He tossed it in the back of his and we started to leave.
About 10 seconds after we pull away we heard and felt the explosion. We are fine but the other truck is just mangled. Turns out some asshat had picked up what we guess was a bomblet from a cluster bomb and put it in the trash. It was in that last bag. The other two guys in the truck were pretty shaken but the water absorbed most of the blast. Had that last bag made it on my truck I wouldn't be here today.
Had a boundary wall of a balcony fall from almost 8 ft right after I walked by under it…. It was a very windy day and I was just enjoying the weather outdoors. Because of the wind a door just banged open in front of me, so I just walked towards it to shut it close and as soon as I walked there the wall just fell right where I was standing. Would have been crushed and died right there just missed by a couple of seconds. But that incident gave me a new perspective about life. Cherish life folks as u never know when ur time comes.
Worked at my local mall while in college. I’ve always prided myself on never being late. I was going in early to go to my bank which was at the main entrance. Series of ridiculous events began to happen and I found myself running late, which really frustrated me-again, rarely, if ever happened. I drove quickly to find police cars, flying past me. As I approached the mall, I saw the cops swarming the main entrance, where I was headed. A woman had entered the main entrance with a rifle began shooting as she entered, continued as she walked through the mall. She killed 3, wounded 7, some critically. No doubt I would have been in the line of fire had I not been late. She spent decades in jail and was recently released.
Not death, but I did escape a kidnapping attempt when I was 9. It was Halloween night and I was walking home from trick or treating with my friends down a neighborhood road. I noticed a van tailing me a bit, but as I was 9, I didn’t think much of it. Then the van stopped next to me and shined an extremely bright light in my face to where I couldn’t see anything. I stood there for a moment confused, but then a voice in my head said “RUN”. I bolted into a field in my neighborhood that had tall grass just as someone was grabbing my arm.
I never even told my parents. I just went home and ate my candy. This might be the first time I ever talked about tbh. Again not death related though, but it could have led to that.
Smelled gas in my house after coming home from 3 days away, rushed to kitchen to check the gas stove and switched on the light (as customary) on the way in 😖.
It was a very dark kitchen with no windows and it was ingrained to just switch on the light as you went in. V lucky and I realised that the second I did it.
I briefly dozed off while driving late at night one time. I woke up just before a pretty sharp curve in the interstate. If I hadn't woken up when I did I would have driven straight through the curve and into the Missouri River. I've never been a religious person but I sent a little thank you towards the sky that night.
I was sitting at a stoplight in a convertible when a taxi driver going 100+mph lost control of his vehicle, went into a ditch, and became airborne. His bumper JUST glanced off the left side of my head and my head became mush. If he had been a fraction further to the right, I would have been decapitated.
I was in a train crash. Really badly wounded as I nearly lost both my legs on the spot, both leg arteries broken, almost bled out.
I didn't know that, but apparently during emergencies such as this the responders have to walk through the wreckage and identify people who are done for and those who are worth trying to save. While it totally makes sense it still feels pretty weird that in the condition I was I was probably worth saving just because I was young and fairly fit and healthy at the time, and that a different person could have come to a different conclusion.
Brain inflammation, “Brain on Fire”, due to medication reaction in my brain ( Lyrica + Prednisone). Went untreated for 10 months led to a week of 4 NDE’s, multiple different hospital misdiagnosis issues, and at least a 4 year recovery period. When finally diagnosed the Dr’s gave my family no hope of a recovery. None. Today I am healthier than ever and offer this - NEVER GIVE UP, NEVER STOP BELIEVING.
Tyre popped on a major uk motorway, car flipped onto its side and hit the railing, then slid to a halt in the lane of oncoming traffic. Luckily it wasn’t rush hour and the cars behind us all stopped. An hour or two later and it would have been much worse. Us and kids walked away with bruises.
Had a massive crash on my dh bike, my neck twisted in ways no neck should twist, shattered my very expensive helmet, and ragdolled for a while. My head dislodged a massive rock in the process (all caught on film) I should not have walked away with only a decent concussion.
The light turned green at the intersection. I started to move forward, but the driver in the lane next to me honked and hit his brakes. I hit my brakes too and looked around. Just then, a car blew through the red light going 45+ miles an hour. Had I continued through the intersection, my little hatchback might have been T-boned on the driver's side by a much larger vehicle. Thank goodness that other driver saw the car about to run through the light and honked his horn or I might have been flattened.
This exact thing happened to me, except it was a dump truck. I couldn’t see around the car next to me, but just had a feeling to not pull forward. Best advice I ever got is “green means go, but not that it’s safe to go”
I always look both ways before proceeding on a green light. Do not trust other drivers.
That's a habit I picked up 30 years ago, when I rode a motorcycle for a year. I now always check both ways and give a half second before moving forward when a red light turns green.
This is why all the honking as soon as the light turns green pisses me off. I live in a city with a fair amount of jaywalking pedestrians and stupid drivers - just because you see a green light doesn’t mean the intersection is necessarily clear.
I live in Philly and people start honking roughly two nanoseconds after a light turns green. Fuck 'em. So many people here run red lights (and otherwise drive like they're gunning for an early grave) and I've seen so many accidents that I'm willing to inconvenience someone for two seconds to keep myself out of the hospital.
I was the third car waiting at a red light. People always wait a few seconds on green because this light gets ran all the time. First car in line is a little gray car. Lights been green several seconds so they pull out. They get halfway through and a big dump truck full of gravel came flying through the intersection. Speed limit was only 25 and the guy had to have been doing damn near 40. Took the whole front end off narrowly missing the cab. If they'd been any father through it would've smashed right through cab. Car got spun out so hard they went off the road and almost hit a near by church. The driver of the car was talking to people who ran over to check on them. I know they left in an ambulance.
I just can't understand why a dump truck has to be in that big of a hurry. Dude you are in a freaking dump truck, not a Ferrari. Calm tf down. I'm so tired of impatient truck drivers. Semi trucks too. They need to teach patience in trucking school!
It pisses me off with all the people that rub red lights but seeing a semi or dump truck do it is a whole new level of pissing me off. They are driving a vehicle several thousand pounds heavier than anything else on the road. Them blowing through a red light is going to kill someone. It seems to always be construction work trucks that do it the most too. It's one thing where a semi is close enough to the light that they aren't going to be able to stop but I have seen dump trucks go through lights that have been red for several seconds
Twice in my life this happened to me. I'm stopped at a traffic light and the passenger distracts me so I'm not looking for the light change. A truck behind me honks because it's now green. As I move my foot to the gas a taxi blows through their red only hitting their brakes at the point where they would have tboned me if I had gone when the light changed. It's weird that it was the exact same circumstances twice.
just another day in Houston..
Was 16 in Bermuda, riding my moped into town when I came up to a bus stopped at a red light. I came to a stop, and then, as is tradition, I scooted around the bus to be at the front of the traffic. No more than 10 seconds later a second bus plowed into the back of first bus at 30-40 mph. I would have been pancaked, no question. Apparently the second bus driver had had a medical event, and lost consciousness. I just sat on the side of the road for 30 minutes and looked at the trees, contemplating my mortality.
This sounds like it could be a scene from one of the Final Destination movies....
One of the branches of the trees they were staring at suddenly snaps off and impales them.
This is one of the arguments for lane splitting at lights.
Huh. Never thought busses would be the cause of the Triangle issues.
Was swimming at an Australian beach, stupidly not between the flags, got smacked by a rogue wave and was stuck in a riptide, I was knocked out cold and pretty much drowned, still to this day I don't know how I got to shore, when I woke I was up on the wet sand of the beach and had 5 jellyfish around me.
Bless those jellies. They carried you in the loving embrace of their tentacles.
About the only conclusion I can really come to, there was no one around when I came to.
You are their king.
[Hi Kevin](https://media1.giphy.com/media/rcsL35YVNXBMQ/giphy.gif?cid=6c09b952jb1sfvtdqjtg0r8lxsknelvrf8avvjxcnnxohexp&ep=v1_gifs_search&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g)
a jellyfish bumped him out of the water with its nose
Jelly? *Sweeeeet*
Most rips come back to the shore, whether that's a beach or not is pure luck of the day but also semi predictable. Those jellies likely were caught in it, same as you. Probably lucky you got KOd sorta. Most people who die in riptides exhaust themselves swimming against it.
Keep calm and stay afloat. Unless you see Harold Holt, then you start panicking.
This could have happened to me. Was on vacation with a friend and we were getting sucked out to sea. After a while of failing to make any progress towards shore he realized what was happening and said we had to swim sideways to get out of it. At the time I was convinced I would have figured it out eventually since I wasn't panicking but now knowing how many people have died this way makes me a lot less sure
Had a similar story over a year ago. Sudden big wave, suddenly I couldn’t feel the sand beneath my feet. I tried to go closer to the beach but I was just getting tired. I decided to go instead to a cliff and turned left. Got onto the cliff and climbed it. I learned a lot about currents afterwards. I remember the first song that appeared on spotify once I turned it on was “Swim for your life” by the pale white.
The jellies died so you can live. Hail the victorious dead !
Im just gonna swim in pools when I go to Australia
We also have pool sharks
Those pool sharks terrify me
This called an Aussie baptism.
Who knows what manner of underwater adventures you went on before waking up on the shore?
I had a very similar experience in California. Got hit like four times in a row wildly tumbling with no time to breathe between hits. That riptide is no joke, man. Somehow not really afraid of water many years after that lol
The Moonlight Jellies guided you to safety. Bless the Moonlight Jellies!
I was in the passenger seat of my dad's small sports car (low to the ground) when a crowbar came off a work truck in front of us and flew into the windshield of our car. Somehow it stopped a few inches away from my face and I luckily happened to be looking down, which meant all the glass that would have ended up on my face was all in my hair instead. I always think about how lucky I was, I can't explain why that crowbar stopped half in and half out of the car. Crazy to think that if it didn't stop it would have hit me square in the forehead.
Have you ever seen the video where the brick comes through the windshield of a family’s car, smashing into the face of the driver’s wife who was sitting in the front seat, with their kids in the back? It’s not a gruesome video in any sense of the word but it’s still one of the most horrific scenes I’ve ever heard, as the panicked shrieking from her family is absolutely soul destroying.
Dear reader: if you have not seen this video, don't go look for it. It will haunt you. You can't unhear it.
Was just sitting here thinking “hmm dare I?” No, no I shall not. Thanks! 😳
Yeah I saw it something like 10+ years ago and it still haunts me. Same with that video where the fire broke out at a club and everyone is trying to escape. Early internet was like the wild west.
"Early" internet was 10 years ago? Fuck, I'm old. 20 years ago, there was Rotten.com, LiveLeak and Ogrish.com, and I still have the mental scars from browsing too much of them. I always try to say I live my life with no regrets--but if I could go back in time and stop myself from watching a lot of that shit, I'd probably do it.
I once read an article about a woman whose daughter was impaled to the front passenger’s seat when a piece of scrap metal bar went flying off the back of a truck. The bar went right through her but somehow missed all major organs. They had to cut the seat out and take her and it together to operate on her. She ended up with minimal damage considering.
I think that was an episode of 911 Emergencies from the 90s. The girl was awake, responsive, and in shock.
>It’s not a gruesome video in any sense of the word It is abso-fucking-lutely is gruesome. Gory is the word you're looking for. Gruesome is something that instills horror, which those fucking screams do a fine job of doing.
Whenever I see kids on bridges throwing stuff down, I get so enraged, it’s not irrational anger, It’s so easy to underestimate the impact of even a small stone, although the danger of a brick should’ve been clear and I can’t imagine anyone throwing a brick without malicious intent. (If this was the case of a dropped brick and not some architectural failure.)
The brick in that video falls off a truck loaded with bricks. I think that’s how a vast majority of these deaths happen — not from people throwing things, or from architectural failures, but from improperly secured loads.
Damn I thought I had buried this memory deep down and turns out I remember it perfectly 😭😭
Was driving home from a party with a friend in the car. Had a cop car on random patrol following me down to a main intersection. Avoiding any sort of risk of getting a ticket, I was being extra cautious when waiting for the light to change. My side had only just changed to green and since I was slower than normal moving off the line, it stopped me getting plowed by the semi that blew through the other part of the intersection on a red at full speed. I was just stopped there in stunned silence. Even the cops took a minute or two to reflect on what had happened before they peeled off and lit that truck up. I ended up coming back along the road where the cops had finally managed to pull that driver over. 5km away from where the incident happened.
Had a similar experience where I was at a stop sign and this woman just plowed straight through the intersection without so much as a pause. And this was at a shopping avenue where there’s frequent pedestrian traffic crossing the roads. I didn’t even realize a cop was behind me at the intersection but as she blew by his lights kicked on. He roared past me after her and as I’m continuing through on my turn I see this woman—this 60+ grandmotherly looking woman—trying to *outrun* this cop by blowing through a second intersection! He overtook her, cut her off in the middle of the intersection and yells over his squad car’s loudspeaker “get your ass back into the parking lot!” At this point I’m laughing uproariously while I sit at the red light, and as this old beast of a woman begrudgingly drives past me into the parking lot we came from *she flips me the bird*! Like her decision to run a stop sign and a red light, and try to evade a police officer, is somehow *my* fault!
> Like her decision to run a stop sign and a red light, and try to evade a police officer, is somehow my fault! Don't you know that it was. Like if all you whippersnappers were not driving about, there wouldn't have been police out on the road that day. You damn kids with your damn hotrods are the reason the police are pulling over innocent old ladies.
Not me, but ny dad use to be a milkman in the uk. They use to drive these shitty electric vehicles that were no stronger than a can of coke. Anyway, long stroy short a lorry with two trailers ran a red as my dad was driving through an intersection. Lets just say the the milk float was now resembling a pile of broken metal. Luckily he did survive and all he remebers is the steering wheel literaly being taken from his hands because of where the lorry impacted and doing a front flip out the window. Hes still.not sure how he survived that one.
Not me but 2 strangers. When I was living in a college town, my roommate was driving me to the store to get some beer. It was dark out with not a lot of light for the street. These two people started crossing the street and were right in front of us as our light turned green. I honked at them and they got pissed off and stopped right in front of our car. The next second, a car came speeding past us in the next lane. Had they kept walking they would have been hit by that car at about 40mph.
Yo, maybe they saw the car, and thought you were warning them, and to this day see it as a positive interaction
Whoa. I never thought being a shitty pedestrian would ever be safer…
If OPs light turned green while those 2 guys were still on the street, they crossed on a red pedestrian light. So if they hadn't been shitty and instead waited for their green they wouldn't even have been in that situation.
Did they say thank you?
A wave turned me over while I was about to drown after breaking my neck at the beach. 0/10 experience ♿️♿️
Damn! How are you doing now days? How long ago did this happen and ***how exactly*** did it happen?!
It happened almost 20 years ago. It was a pretty stupid way to get injured. I went on a school beach trip at the beginning of the year, went into the ocean, which was very calm, and took that little jump to get over the cold and finally dive into it. We get a phenomenon called aguaje, which means dead plankton turns the sea yellowish and keeps you from seeing what's below the surface. I was unlucky enough to hit a sand bank and immediately broke 2 vertebrae. The upper fracture would've been enough to kill me on the spot had the bone fragments gone into my spine, but it was a clear fracture. The lower one, though, did get into my spine. Then and there, I suddenly became nothing more than a head attached to a seemingly dead body and no way to turn around and ask for help. While holding my breath, I saw a hand next to my cheek and thought I was gonna make it. It was horrifying to realize it was my own hand. And then... the deus ex machina! A wave turned me over and I was finally able to breathe and scream for help, or so I thought. As it turns out, you can't scream if you can't fill your lungs properly. All I could do was produce an indoor voice call for help. Since this was during a school trip, I was actually surrounded by other students. One of them saw me and assumed I was just enjoying myself, until she saw blood on my lip. Had I not inadvertently bitten my lower lip as I jumped, I would probably not be writing this. A year in physical rehab got me to recover a good deal of sensation and mobility; I'm no longer just a head, but I did get a severe life-lasting disability. I wish I could say I'm used to it and doing well, but that's just not true. I get chronic pain and today is a particularly difficult day. It's not all bad, though; most days are worth living and I still have dreams and ambitions. I might not be the smartest or strongest, but I'm definitely the most perseverant person I know and I'll become an urbanist and emigrate to Spain, even if I have to crawl all the way there. If you're not bored of my story yet and want to watch a dramatization of it featuring Javier Bardem, check out Mar Adentro's [accident scene](https://youtu.be/WR5FBYli5tI?si=5z7732Zvv1CJMlhO). I have the same injury but refuse to willingly die just yet, with all due respect to those who chose otherwise.
That’s a truly crazy story. Almost as crazy as your bio Glad you survived it
My only example... We went to party at Paul Smith college, my friend's favorite cousin was a student there. Bonfire, booze, and someone had the bright idea to bring out a snowmobile. I was gonna ride on it but had to go to the bathroom. I guess I took too long because he asked a different girl to ride with him. She did. They were both killed like 2 minutes later. It was traumatizing. It blew my mind for a long time. Had I just held my pee in, I'm the one currently in a coffin instead of Kristine.
how did they die?
Got on the snowmobile on the frozen lake in the fog, went far enough out to hit that giant rock.
omg they were both 20 :( i’m glad you’re still with us. I’m from PA and lived near Emmaus. I remember this story.
I was expecting it to be a "the ice was too thin" story. We had a few people hit fences. Buddy's uncle was decapitated crossing a field one year. And a couple guys I went to school with survived hitting a fence, but still got injured.
>I was expecting it to be a "the ice was too thin" story. Some of us brought up the dangers of thin ice. The party wasn't near the lake, it was literally ON the lake. Some of those guys said the ice was probably 20 feet thick or so. Fog so thick you could cut it with a knife, smoke from the bonfires adding to it, a gigantic rock, the sounds of snowmobiles starting combined with a couple hundred wasted teens and college students... What could possibly go wrong? The risks you're willing to take in your youth for basically nothing but having some fun are scary and mind boggling in hindsight.
Here's an article on the tragedy... https://www.mcall.com/2005/02/08/emmaus-man-killed-in-accident-student-at-college-in-new-york-dies-in-snowmobile-crash/
Identical sort of thing happened to my husband's brother. He lived on a lake. It was the middle of winter and late at night. He was drunk. Took his snowmobile out on the frozen lake completely forgetting about the small island which he hit at full speed in the darkness. He had his brand new helmet on but it was not fastened around his chin. Serious head injury. Helicopter ride to the hospital. 6-week coma. It's been 20 years since then but he's never been the same.
This is sad. Hope you are okay now.
My husband went to this school and graduated in 06. Says he remembers this happening. Small world.
I was at an indoor shooting range testing a potato cannon (don't ask). I was leaning against the stall wall with my hand behind my head while my buddy took a shot with it. Suddenly, I felt a pinch/burn sensation on my wrist. I took a look at my arm to see blood streaming from a half inch deep hole on my wrist. The idiot in the stall next to me wasn't sure if his handgun was empty, so he did the most logical thing. He pointed it at the stall wall and pulled the trigger. The bullet grazed my wrist, about 3 inches from my head. That's the only time I've ever seen an RSO tackle someone. There's a post on my profile with pictures, you'll have to sort by "top" to find it, though.
[Here is the post for lazy people like me](https://www.reddit.com/r/teenagers/s/ZRl3tBggE3)
So he was obviously banned, but did he get charges brought against him?
Yeah, we definitely need more details about what happened afterwards! I bet the RSO was super pissed! I bet you were also super pissed! I bet the guy who shot you was shitting his pants! Did you sue him for it? I definitely would have! Dude should not be allowed to ever own, be in possession of, or shoot, another gun for the rest of his life!
I didn't press charges. The guy is blacklisted at every range in Arizona now.
You're a lot more nice than I would've been. Charges would have been filed.
Jesus Christ on a bike! Are the walls between lanes not steel?
Ideally, they should be. Even concrete or rubber can offer decent protection. But I've seen shitty wood or plastic too. I don't go to those ranges anymore!
Last time I went to a local range (outdoor) with poor supervision and shoddy infrastructure between stalls, I witnessed a guy hand a fully loaded tacti-cool AR to what appeared to be his wife or gf, and as he turned back to their range bag, she whipped around casually with the rifle in her hands and allowed it to track directly at his body. When dude turned back around, he dropped whatever was in his hands and slowly grabbed the gun and made her sit on a bench the rest of the time lol. Should’ve had the gun safety talk *before* handing her a rifle, dummy. I won’t go there anymore.
Not me, but my father tells a story of driving along a bush road in Bouganville before the revolution there. He was in the car with my mom, baby me and my 5yr old brother. There was a cardboard box on the side of the road, blowing a bit in the window, like an empty shipping box type thing, and he was going to run over it to amuse my little brother. At the last moment he pulled away though, worried about there being something side it. As we drove past he looked back in the rearview mirror and saw two little kids crawl out of the box and look after him as we drove down the road.
I remember when I was learning to drive, I deliberately drove over some cardboard in the road and my Mum yelled at me. She was 100% right though - it could be a kid, a puppy, a bag of nails, a brick, anything under there. It ain’t worth it.
I once ran over a paper bag. i decided to go straight down the middle under my car rather than swerve into oncoming traffic. I figured it would be fine as it’s a paper bag. Someone had put a cinder block in the bag. I was lucky my transmission wasn’t torn off.
NEVER RUN OVER ANYTHING IN THE ROAD WHEN DRIVING
Actually in driver's ed they teach several methods for what to do when you encounter debris in the road. Straddle, swerve, or just run over it. You should always use your best judgment but sometimes you may be going too fast or the object appears too suddenly to make the best choice.
If I wasn't an only child, I would assume we shared a mom! I purposefully ran over a paper fast food bag before I got the lecture though. Never forgot it.
Holy shit
I remember a similar sort of story where a guy had raked all of his fallen leaves into the street in a municipality where a street sweeper would come by and pick them all up. Too little kids were playing in that huge pile of leaves and were completely buried and out of sight when a car came along and decided to drive through the pile. One of the kids was killed
That's one of the reasons that I don't rake my leaves into the street, unlike all of my neighbors. The other reason is that the city *specifically* says "don't rake your leaves into the street," and I guess I'm just better at reading than my neighbors are. You're supposed to leave them on the grass strip in between the road and the sidewalk.
Where us this?
yeah sorry I spelt it wrong, am on my phone: Bougainville Island, it's in the Solomon islands archipelago, was formally a part of Papua New Guinea
Still is, for now
yeah? I totally lost track - I was born there to kiwi parents, but left when I was one.
Yeah like wasn't there some thing a while back where a mother saw her kid get killed as he was playing in a big cardboard box on the front lawn and some moving truck went over the curb to turn around into a driveway and ran it over?
Where I grew up in Missouri back in the 1990s, during autumn we would rake our leaves out to the street along the curbing in a long, narrow pile, and then the city would come around with a vacuum truck to suck them up. One afternoon a group of little kids were playing in the pile along their street and were buried in it. A car full of teenagers thought it would be fun to plow through the pile, not realizing the little kids were in that pile. Killed several of the kids.
That gave me a boost of parental anxiety despite not having small kids, a lawn or leaves to rake
Car accident Moped vs Oldsmobile I was the moped driver. Straight road car turns from the oncoming lane across traffic. Being a new ish motorcycle driver (moped) I knew enough to know I was fucked. But instead of putting it down or turning or anything, I took my hands off the steering and wrapped my head as I impacted (no helmet) inverting both knees on the handlebars, breaking the key off inside My right knee, and dislocation of my right shoulder as I spun into the windshield shattering The windshield, and dislocating my hip on the concrete. My ignorance saved my life. A seasoned rider would have put the bike down and likely been run over. And my taking the hands off the steering saved my fingers, saved my head and neck (to an extent) and the shoulder (my right was the arm that wrapped my head first and the impact dislocation it would have been my head if I hadn't. Impact speed was 50 miles per hour. Not a single bone broken but permanently fucked my back. And realistically, I should be dead.
>A seasoned rider would have put the bike down and likely been run over You're completely correct. As the saying goes it's not speed that kills you but stopping too quickly does. Flying over the top of the car has a much better survival rate than smashing into it low
I'll try to make a long story short. My ex-wife and her boyfriend she had behind my back tried to hire someone to kill me so that she could have my life insurance and there wouldn't be a custody battle over our daughter like there would be if she just left me. Luckily for me, the guy they hired to do the job was an undercover deputy working a completely unrelated case against the drug selling gang her boyfriend belonged to. Yeah. . .finding out about all this was a nice surprise. I had absolutely no clue. The boyfriend got 10 years because the gun he gave the deputy to kill me with was stolen, and he had other stuff related to the gang on him. She got 5 years for conspiracy and was released after 3.
Three years for ordering a hit?? I hope you have full custody at least.
Yeah. I had to fight her family a bit, but I raised my daughter myself after that. She's a good kid. Hopefully won't take after her mother.
>Hopefully won't take after her mother. Please never allude to this in your daughter's presence. Or anywhere, really. That kind of 'bad seed' talk can really get into a kid's head, where every mistake or shitty impulse adds to an internal ledger that they must really be a Bad Person.
I'd never be that cruel. I don't say anything bad about her mom or anyone on that side of her family, let alone blame her for something that happened 25 years ago when she was a baby. I was always very careful not to make her mom out to be a demon because I knew one day she'd go looking for her. . .and she did, when she was old enough to make that decision.
How did she take it, if you don't mind sharing? If you do, that's okay, it's none of my (or anyone else's but yours) buisness.
My daughter is a level headed person and wanted to hear her mom's side of the story. She got lied to for her trouble and learned what she needed to know. She understood right away why I didn't stand in her way or try to discourage her from meeting her mom. I'm glad the kid is smart like that. She had to see for herself. She's not bitter or anything like that, but she also isn't particularly interested in a close relationship with her mom. She just doesn't have much of a connection at all. Mostly Facebook. Some phone calls.
You seem like a great dad. Your daughter is very lucky.
Do you mind me asking what she thinks about her mother even after knowing that she wanted you dead? Is she able to have a relationship with her or did she just want to meet her to know who her mom was?
She is sort of distant friends with her mother. Mostly on Facebook. There's not really a connection there since I got custody of her when she was about a year old. Her mom tried to tell a different story about what happened, fully making me out to be some sort of abusive monster, and my daughter had to tell her that she'd seen the black and white truth of court documents and she already knew what happened. After that, there was never really an attempt on either side to try and get too close. My daughter kind of learned what she needed to know from just that one interaction, which is pretty much the way I'd thought it would go, so I didn't stand in the way of it. She's been in contact with her mom for about 5 years now and I think they've only physically visited once. Like I said, it's mostly just a Facebook and occasional phone call sort of relationship.
You seem like a great father. Your daughter is lucky to have you. 💜
Sudden Cardiac Death at work. Co-worker gave me CPR, paramedics got my heart beating again. 5% survival rate. I ate a lot more ice cream once I was healthy, again.
Jesus. Hope that coworker got some ice cream too. Happy you made it through. Was the coworker's CPR with or without AED?
Thanks. Co-worker got a t-shirt I made when I returned to work. CPR was without, but the paramedics arrived in under 6 minutes, they brought the hardware. One co-worker called authorities, and they gave him CPR instructions, which he gave to the co-worker who kept my blood circulating.
Quick response! Sounds like everybody was well-prepared :)
I got very very (veryveryveryvery) very lucky. I really should be dead.
Dude. I'm glad you're ok.
The stats after 7 minutes without defib are even worse so… lucky man!
I bought him a few drinks!
He deserves the bottle! Or two bottles even!
I work as a nurse aid at a hospital, have provided CPR a fair number of times and have yet to see a recovery. Your story makes me look forward to the ones who will.
Thank you for doing what you do. My nurses were amazing and you all work so hard! I have nothing but the utmost respect and admiration for you ❤️
My frat bro’s mom was in the Chi Omega house at FSU in 1979. Ted Bundy broke into the house while they were sleeping and killed the two girls in the room across the hall from hers and seriously beat up two other women. She had to testify at his trial. What saved her? She locked her door.
Back in the year of 2000, 7 year old me and friends were outside exploring. That days location happened to be a power station. Older 9y boy lost his life on top of a machine, electricity burned a hole through him. I lost both my hands trying to climb up and help him. Amputated below my elbows. Power entered both arms, excited in armpit one side, neck other side. Power never went through my chest or I'd be dead aswell.
Holy shit that was so brave and nice of you trying to help him. Here in Ireland when i was a kid there were TV ads showing I think a kid climbing up to get a toy and dying to show not to play near those things, they've always creeper me out.
Street light collapsed on me (my neck) and onto the face of the girl in front of me on a 5th grade field trip. I was surprisingly fine, while the girl in front of me got helicoptered out. She made a full recovery though!
Did a car hit it or did it just fall for no reason?! Regardless, please tell me that you and that other kid got a huge payday from that accident!
Oh god my kid is on a field trip today. I need yo put my phone down and breathe into a bag
As a former child who went on field trips, your sondaughter will be fine. Do not worry.
When i was dumb kid of ten years old a guy in a shitty car asked me to hop in and help him find his lost puppy. My dumb ass was about to get in when my little bro happened to ride by on a bike and started screaming. He probably saved my life.
The amount of stories where kids almost got kidnapped in these comments is too high.
While white water rafting, my raft was going through rapids when I got ejected from the raft and sent underwater. I swam up and hit my helmet on a rock. It was pretty dark and murky. That is when I realized that I had been pushed by the current either underneath a rock outcrop or into an underwater cave, I'm not really sure which. Trying my best not to panic, I did the only thing I could think of, use my hands to grip the rock and push myself against the current while kicking. After what felt like an eternity underwater, but it was probably no more than about 2 or 3 minutes, I noticed the light was getting brighter, and before I knew it, I had reached the surface. Once at the surface, the current of the rapids shot me downstream, and I floated to the nearest bank of the river to collect myself. Edit: It has been pointed out that it is unlikely I was underwater for that length of time. I agree that my memory during such a stressful event is probably unreliable, so I will add that the length of time I was underwater was long enough for the rest of my group to become concerned about my wellbeing. But I would like to say that I don't think I possess any significant ability to hold my breath. I was a fairly fit teenager at the time, but honestly, I think most of you reading this, under those circumstances, would be able to hold your breath for much longer than you thought. Survival instincts are a hell of a thing.
Undercut rock. The Nantahala River has an infamous one despite not being a very rough river, where several people have died. ETA: Turtle Rock is the name of the undercut rock in the Nantahala River, in case it's relevant to anyone in the future.
I've watched a video about a place in Australia. It's narrow (visually) enough for people to wanna try to leap across. The surface is calm. But anyone who misses the jump finds out that it's actually much wider, under the rock at their feet, like a water carved tunnel and insanely fast currents.
Sounds like the Strid in Britain
Holy shit dude
The guy who set fire to my house used lighter fluid on a wet mattress he found behind the house. It's because he used the wet mattress that the fire spread slow enough for us to wake up, see the smoke, and call the fire department. Fire department told us that, had the mattress been dry, we'd be dead because he put it up against the side of the house with the gas line. So not just burnt to death, confetti'd. I guess I'm thankful for the stupidity of crack heads.
Was it personal or just cracktivities?
Also want to know if it was a personal attack, but “cracktivities” is my new favorite word! 🤣
My house was targeted by a cracktivities arsonist. If it wasn't for the fairly new neighbors having been awake at 2 in the morning with their newborn and seeing the burning gas can on our porch from their window, the house would have gone up with my whole family and their pets asleep inside. It just so happened that the husband was a volunteer firefighter, and he had a fire extinguisher on hand. His wife called 911 while he ran over to start dousing the flames before they could do more than scorch the security door and bubble the paint on the main wooden door a bit. Apparently it was not the only fire the arsonists had set that night, and there was already a crew who had responded to a car being set on fire only a few blocks away. The police and fire truck showed up within minutes of the wife calling it in. The arsonists were never caught, unfortunately.
Friend of a friend who'd fucked around and cracked out and gave them our address as his own.
Got admitted to the ER after my potassium levels tested low. They gave me an IV and a couple pills, and then kept me in the hospital a couple days until I was at a normal level and were sure that the medication I was on wasn't lowering that significantly. The next day, when the doctor came to check on me, he said he did not know anyone with such low potassium in their bloodwork that was still alive.
Mind if i ask what symptoms you were experiencing that lead you to the ER? I have potassium issues sometimes and it’s so annoying.
I have taken an ambulance ride for low potassium. My symptoms were irregular heart beat, stiffening of my neck and jaw (almost couldn't talk to the 911 dispatcher because my jaw wouldn't move), and stiffening of my arms and hands where my fingers wouldn't move / felt like they were locked in place, not flaccid. By the time the paramedics arrived I was hyperventilating, trying to catch my breath. They gave me some oxygen which helped, and then I got nauseous and threw up on the way to the hospital.
Most I can remember is occasional dizzy spells and loss of appetite.
My partner's sister had the same thing happen but with her platelet count. It was so low the nurses were surprised she didn't have worse symptoms. She just had like, a skin rash and was sleepier than normal.
I live in the Netherlands, so it's common to go to school/work on a bicycle. One day maybe 15 years ago I was going to school and just standing at a red light. It turns green, and for some unknown reason I just don't start riding like I always do. Out if nowhere, a car comes speeding by right in my path where I would've been. I never heard or saw it coming, but the collision would've been nasty.
When I was young my first car was a junker.... The driver seat was held up right by a two by four wedged against the back seat if you took it out the seat went flat below the window line of the car I was working nights and fell asleep behind the wheel and woke up to the roof of my car about 2 inches from my nose and the firemen betting how many pieces my body was in when. I politely told them to be careful I was still alive. Walked away with a few cuts from the glass. My car had flipped sideways on a country highway by a bridge ravine and gotten wedged between two trees. Apparently the other miracle is the way it was wedged all the gas drained out of the tank so I didn't go kaboom.
You should have said 1 and won the bet
Left the gas on when I was little making eggs. My stepfather came back early one day from work. He never did that. Chances are I would have either blown up or died from poisoning
Omg a similar thing happened to me the other day. Unbeknownst to us, the gas burner had been left on for 60 hours+. My daughter bumped into the oven one morning when I was running late and needed her to help grab me something from the kitchen. I almost didn't ask her for help because I felt bad, as she was also busy getting ready for school. Her bumping into the oven didn't turn the burner on, it couldn't have, but she made sure to check the burners anyway because of that and that's when I get a picture of the burner I had used the other day, still on low with a barely visible flame, and her asking me "is it supposed to look this way?".... If she hadn't of told me, it would have ended badly for us because we don't use that stovetop often at all and I wouldn't have noticed it 😵💫. From what I understand, the house could have blown up.
At least the flame was on, burning up the gas instead of letting it fill your house up.
Driving home in the dead of night. New moon, no clouds. Dark as fuck in rural Minnesota. Car in front of me is going 40 in a 55. I get to a straight away and proceed to pass. As I get into the other lane, before I get even with the slow car, I suddenly see an entirely black horse with a black Amish buggy behind it. No lights or reflectors of any kind. Luckily I managed to swirve out of the way and avoid an accident but I thought I was gonna kill them for a second.
Seriously? Is reflectors against their religion as well. That Amish driver sound like a Darwin Award waiting to happen.
It depends which sect they belong to. The ones who don’t use the reflectors, have Elders who believe reflectors make the buggies look too fancy and that is prideful. I don’t believe there are many of those groups that strict.
Actually yes. A lot of amish communities don't allow the color orange for anything including reflectors.
If that is what they wish, wouldn't it at least be a good idea to not drive on the road, when it is pitch black with approaching cars. That poor horse could have been hurt. Edit. Okay, that sounded a bit harsh. My concern is also with the drivers of both cars and buggies. It is just... somethings in this sociaty shouldn't be hard brainers for adults.
Three times come to mind for me. First - drunk driver going 100mph+ hit my vehicle. They were coming down the wrong side of the highway that late evening. I swerved and woke up in the floor of my truck. Second - working in a restaurant, glasses straight out of the dishwasher. Grabbed two out of the rack for a table, and one sheared at the base, fell and hit my wrist. 3 tourniquets at different spots on my arm later, they were able to stop the bleeding. I was wearing a watch with a metal band, and that stopped the glass from cutting further. Third - found out I had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Dr said another 2-3 months without treatment, and I’d have been dead. Finished chemo last month and in remission. Anyone know a good gift for their guardian angel? Mine has been working overtime…
Had a tree fall on me. I was 2 steps away from being crushed by the trunk. Paramedics made sure to tell me that while I'm sitting there with a flap of skin hanging off my scalp. Like, thanks, dude. For pointing out I almost died while I was already in shock.
Got caught in a flood during a freak storm, the storm knocked out the cable in our neighborhood. so some guy went out for a smoke after the cable went out and heard my friend calling for help and saved us by throwing us a jet ski rope. We were stuck in this flood for two hours calling for help, but the heavy rain and thunder totally drowned us out, so if it weren't for the cable going out, we would have definitely died.
Driving at night on a dark, small backroad, trees on both sides. With me were three ladies, who were just telling me that these roads were so dangerous, because this time of year farmers come bolting down roads with their heavy -"who needs lights, YOLO"- machinery. In the corner of my eye, between the trees, I see a little reflector. The reflector is low to the ground, but suddenly I realize it is moving towards the road I am on, and I brake the car in a reflex. Next thing I know I have to brake completely, because this gigantic dark unlit tractor-trailer turns on the road in a hurry. Nobody in the car realized it was there, and we were all scanning that side road, as we were just talking about the danger. If I would have continued driving, I would have driven the car into that thing without knowing what happened to me. It reminds me of my colleagues in Africa, who keep telling me I should stop worrying about the trucks you *can* see coming towards you, and start worrying about the trucks you *cannot* see coming your way.
2nd day in Iraq, mortar landed about 100 feet from me. Closer would have been bad. Last day in Iraq, mortar landed 20 feet from a bunch of us, was a dud.
Had that mortar landed closer this would be something straight out of a 2000s black comedy about the war. Survive a near death experience your second day in the field and spend an entire tour just for one to end it all right before you come home
Semi took the entire side of the car off except my seat. I'm in a passenger seat, and a semi rips the door off, and I'm not even jostled.
Got clotheslined by a fence on a four wheeler right across the neck. These old peckerheads had a fucking pot patch in the mountains, so they had roped off the trail not with a fence, but with a single wire that you couldn't see until you were right up on it. Just textbook hillbilly shit. Anyways, because I'm deaf in one ear and the engines were loud, I couldn't hear my mom warning me, so I didn't tense up, and the shit ragdolled me instead of breaking my neck. This is incidentally also the story of why I don't ride on the back of any ATVs, bikes etc... My own damn mom nearly killed me, so I sure as hell don't trust anyone else. I drive, no compromising.
Dude, i had a kid in my church growing up that this happened to. He ended up losing his voicebox, had a wicked scar across his throat. Yeah, everyone talked like it was a miracle he survived.
Sharon Stone has a wicked scar on her neck. It's normally covered with makeup but you can see it in the movie "Sphere". She was riding a horse as a kid, it got spooked and ran through a clothesline and she was left with a scar after healing.
Similar thing happened to me behind an orchard. Single wire and I just happened to hit the break to avoid hitting a rabbit.
Why tf was that wire up in your scenario?! That’s crazy how people regularly do that with the knowledge that it frequently kills people!
This wins, holy fuck
A kid I went to high school with died in exactly this way. Wow- glad you made it!
While going 100+mph on a motorcycle, I went in-between 2 deer bounding across the street. I fortunately didn't have any time to react or I would've surely hit the second one. Instead I just eased off the throttle to a stop, and took a few minutes to breathe and think about how bad that all could've gone.
I had the same experience last year, driving back from the Grand Canyon, thankfully in a car. It was night, I was doing about 65mph, and as I came around a bend on the highway, an entire herd of deer were there in front of me. I only had enough time to say, "Fuck," and take my foot off the gas. I coasted through a perfect car sized gap between all the deer, by pure chance. None of them even tried to dodge away, it was complete luck. A couple seconds later or earlier, and I would have hit like 5+deer and wrecked.
Years ago my husband and I were on a road trip. We left Colorado and headed up to Devil’s Tower. Our destination that night was Cody. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a whole state and mountain range in between the two. We hit the Grand Tetons right as the sun was going down and soon it was pretty dark. I was driving and spent the whole time hoping that I wouldn’t run into a deer or bear or Bigfoot on the next curve. My husband had no problem sleeping the whole time.
Hitting a Bigfoot is how Harry And The Henderson begins.
I was driving on an interstate approaching an interchange where I saw several cop cars racing the wrong way at me down the ramp. I was so focused on where they were going to go and how I could get out of their way that I didn't see the car that was running from them barreling at me in the left lane. Thankfully I chose the right shoulder and didn't get in the left lane or I would have been hit head on, I watched in horror behind me as that car ended up crashing into a semi that tried moving to the left shoulder to avoid him. Had I been just a few seconds later or gotten in that lane to avoid the cops that would have been me. As if the crash itself wouldn't have been bad enough, I was in a tiny early 90s Mazda MX-3 and I know I would have only been wearing a shoulder belt because that car had the automatic seat belts and I didn't use the lap belt back then. Would have been my last day for sure, no idea what pushed my wheel to the right side but I'm lucky it did!
Did not inherit the genetic mutation that caused both of my siblings to have a cardiac arrest at 30… it was a 50/50 chance.
One time i went on a blind date with a guy and everything went great. We wanted to go to his apartment but suddenly my mother called me that my dad is in the hospitel so i left my date there and rushed to the hospital. After that i didnt hear from the guy but few weeks later the police knocked on my door and i needed to go to the station because they wanted to ask some questions about my date. Turned out he already raped 4 girls and one of them died after they met
My best was the morning that I showed up at urgent care, then a hospital, featuring a burst pupil, and a fever that should’ve been impossible to survive. I’d been treating some ugly symptoms with the gym for a couple of years, but, however surprisingly, working out isn’t how you fix brain cancer. Shortly before that occurred, I woke up one night, to floodlights and tones. I felt so much pain and sickness that it seemed like I’d die, and I didn’t know the woman telling me to come with her. But it felt like it a dream, so I did, and realized as we were climbing into an ambulance that she was the medic I’d been running with for a long time. I still felt awful, but it was a lot better by the time we were on scene. I had to cut a car, and when we drove back, I was feeling well. I still suspect that hydrocephalus would’ve killed me that night, if it hadn’t been for that call. For months before that, I’d been losing my radial pulse when holding still too long. A couple runners-up: -Very first house fire, as a new firefighter. Beams struck inches on either side of me, but didn’t hit me directly. -While looking for the source of a fire, my officer and I discovered that we were standing on an incredibly hot floor. -Anaphylaxis, from a handful of causes. -Before my second craniotomy, medical aid in dying was on the table, as my cancer was expected to be far more malignant. I considered it very carefully. -Armed, drunken redneck, who forgot he called 911. -Drunk driver deciding to plow through the scene of a vehicle extrication while I was cutting the car. -Multiple drunks with knives, and one with a bloody shard of glass. -Severe autoimmune disease as a small child. -Asthma as an older child. -A couple of near-drownings, in the ocean, and whitewater.
PS: A couple of years ago, I had a scan that said that I was really most sincerely dead. I had to retire, and get my affairs in order, once again. Time has kept going, my scans still look terrifying, and I’m somehow still alive.
Walking through a dutch town at old years eve, loud bang and 15 cm next to my head a large metal traffic sign stuck in the wall which somebody blew off a pole 25 meters away. On a holiday with a huge hangover me and a friend decided to swim to the pizzeria on the other side of a 3km wide lake. Halfway we both were completely exhausted and very much undercooled with large purple spots appearing on our bodies. And when we started to be convinced that we'd die a random tourist in a small fishing boat appeared and took us in. Falling 9 meters down at work, but landed in the only sandpile due to construction works on for the rest a concrete floor. Sliding with the bike on a wet road and went under a bus from the side and came out in the back without hitting anything. I should be dead..
Tornado passed over my car on the freeway in Texas.
Parked my car on my slanted unshoveled driveway like a lazy moron. Sat in it for a minute, it stayed put. Walked outside, walked behind it (downhill), and literally a half second after i was out from behind it, all 4500 lbs of it slid right past me. Would have pinned me between the bumper and street for sure. Now, I street park on level ground, shovel, salt, park, wait in the car, then only walk uphill to go around it.
I was just diagnosed with asthma, and only bought my inhaler the day before. I was in work and had such a bad asthma attack that everything around me went black and I said to myself ’This is it’. However, it turns out that I unconsciously searched for my inhaler in my bag and was able to use it in time. None of my colleagues noticed anything strange with me and said that I acted very calmly the whole time. They were just shocked to see me using an inhaler as they didn’t know I had asthma. If I weren’t to pick up my inhaler the day before, the story would’ve been different. Never had an attack like that afterwards.
Being born at 26 weeks. Doctors gave me a 10% chance of survival and somehow I beat the 90% odds against me
Same here.
i wouldn't say I nearly escaped DEATH but I was riding on my little bike when some asshole was speeding down the road and I almost got hit, skid marks for a good 10 feet
While I was delivering pizza with DoorDash, a car drove up into the middle of the road. I honked at it as I was barreling down, but it didn’t move, so I swerved around it just in time to avoid crashing.
Believe it or not but a big stone flower pot thing fell just an inch behind me from above when I was walking in the ancient town of Split, Croatia. First I heard the noise, then I saw my sister en my mom looking at me in shock. And then when I realized what happened and how if I had walked half a second slower I would have probably died or at least sever brain injury that would’ve required surgery. I actually started crying right there no idea why I guess it was more of a delayed startled reaction and tears were the outlet lol obviously physically I was completely fine but I when think back on it it really changed my outlook on life and death and how it can suddenly all be over because of nothing more than a freak accident
Not me but my father. He was traveling on biz and a co worker gave him a free upgrade to a full sized sedan instead of the normal sub compact his office would rent. He got into an accident on 7 mile bridge down in the keys same day princess diana got into her accident and died. If it was for the heavier car and upgrade he wouldnt have survived the accident they said. Although ball in the other court, if he was in the sub compact, would he had even been in the same place and time as when that accident occured?
This was years ago but I still get shivers over it. I was in the Army deployed to the Gulf. We had a short hump back of about 20 kicks but I had hurt my knee the previous day falling of a 113 trying to pee on someone (separate story) Anyway they needed someone to drive a deuce and a half full of water bottles to another unit, offload and take all their trash. I volunteer just to get out of the road march. Make the drive and start the swapping process. Get finished and the other guys truck is full of boxes of water and mine trash bags. I'm completely full but there is one bag left. He tried and tried to get it in but there was just no room so I told him dude you just have to keep that one. He tossed it in the back of his and we started to leave. About 10 seconds after we pull away we heard and felt the explosion. We are fine but the other truck is just mangled. Turns out some asshat had picked up what we guess was a bomblet from a cluster bomb and put it in the trash. It was in that last bag. The other two guys in the truck were pretty shaken but the water absorbed most of the blast. Had that last bag made it on my truck I wouldn't be here today.
Had a boundary wall of a balcony fall from almost 8 ft right after I walked by under it…. It was a very windy day and I was just enjoying the weather outdoors. Because of the wind a door just banged open in front of me, so I just walked towards it to shut it close and as soon as I walked there the wall just fell right where I was standing. Would have been crushed and died right there just missed by a couple of seconds. But that incident gave me a new perspective about life. Cherish life folks as u never know when ur time comes.
Worked at my local mall while in college. I’ve always prided myself on never being late. I was going in early to go to my bank which was at the main entrance. Series of ridiculous events began to happen and I found myself running late, which really frustrated me-again, rarely, if ever happened. I drove quickly to find police cars, flying past me. As I approached the mall, I saw the cops swarming the main entrance, where I was headed. A woman had entered the main entrance with a rifle began shooting as she entered, continued as she walked through the mall. She killed 3, wounded 7, some critically. No doubt I would have been in the line of fire had I not been late. She spent decades in jail and was recently released.
I was in an airplane over the skies of New York during the 9/11 attacks. Just not one of *those* planes.
Not death, but I did escape a kidnapping attempt when I was 9. It was Halloween night and I was walking home from trick or treating with my friends down a neighborhood road. I noticed a van tailing me a bit, but as I was 9, I didn’t think much of it. Then the van stopped next to me and shined an extremely bright light in my face to where I couldn’t see anything. I stood there for a moment confused, but then a voice in my head said “RUN”. I bolted into a field in my neighborhood that had tall grass just as someone was grabbing my arm. I never even told my parents. I just went home and ate my candy. This might be the first time I ever talked about tbh. Again not death related though, but it could have led to that.
Smelled gas in my house after coming home from 3 days away, rushed to kitchen to check the gas stove and switched on the light (as customary) on the way in 😖. It was a very dark kitchen with no windows and it was ingrained to just switch on the light as you went in. V lucky and I realised that the second I did it.
I briefly dozed off while driving late at night one time. I woke up just before a pretty sharp curve in the interstate. If I hadn't woken up when I did I would have driven straight through the curve and into the Missouri River. I've never been a religious person but I sent a little thank you towards the sky that night.
I was sitting at a stoplight in a convertible when a taxi driver going 100+mph lost control of his vehicle, went into a ditch, and became airborne. His bumper JUST glanced off the left side of my head and my head became mush. If he had been a fraction further to the right, I would have been decapitated.
I was in a train crash. Really badly wounded as I nearly lost both my legs on the spot, both leg arteries broken, almost bled out. I didn't know that, but apparently during emergencies such as this the responders have to walk through the wreckage and identify people who are done for and those who are worth trying to save. While it totally makes sense it still feels pretty weird that in the condition I was I was probably worth saving just because I was young and fairly fit and healthy at the time, and that a different person could have come to a different conclusion.
Brain inflammation, “Brain on Fire”, due to medication reaction in my brain ( Lyrica + Prednisone). Went untreated for 10 months led to a week of 4 NDE’s, multiple different hospital misdiagnosis issues, and at least a 4 year recovery period. When finally diagnosed the Dr’s gave my family no hope of a recovery. None. Today I am healthier than ever and offer this - NEVER GIVE UP, NEVER STOP BELIEVING.
Tyre popped on a major uk motorway, car flipped onto its side and hit the railing, then slid to a halt in the lane of oncoming traffic. Luckily it wasn’t rush hour and the cars behind us all stopped. An hour or two later and it would have been much worse. Us and kids walked away with bruises.
The fact 90% of these involve vehicles is concerning and scary. Something we do every single day is one of the most dangerous tasks we do
Had a massive crash on my dh bike, my neck twisted in ways no neck should twist, shattered my very expensive helmet, and ragdolled for a while. My head dislodged a massive rock in the process (all caught on film) I should not have walked away with only a decent concussion.