Have You Ever Had Any Potentially Lethal "Close Call" Accidents In Your Life? (3/30) (1 Viewer)

[GordonGekko]

VIDEO: NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCES best of 2018 Dec 30, 2018

Near death experiences and close calls captured by GoPro and camera compilation. Best of 2018. All people survive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dROYEyPN44



VIDEO: 7 Terrifying Close Calls Caught on Camera #3 Mar 27, 2022

We’ve all had that one moment. Maybe you’ve stopped your car just in time, tires squealing as you avoid a nasty collision, or you managed to catch a child tumbling down off the couch just before they hit the floor. Either way, the physical experience is the same. Your heart pounds just a little harder as your adrenaline spikes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roBBAwca1Lw



VIDEO: 40 Luckiest People Caught On Camera! Nov 20, 2021

In this video we’re going to show you some of the Luckiest People caught on camera!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2844vbvgUQY



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Here is another topic that is designed to increase discussion and participation in the FFA.

Well, if you are here today and posting on the Internet and this message board, you are still alive. Technically.

I would like to avoid discussion issues in this thread here regarding personal/family health care, natural disasters and major controversial "current events" within the scope of the general mainstream media. In so much as any of those issues can dovetail into larger overall public policy related discussions or start to edge into personal laundry.

Have you had a "close call" where the outcome could have been potentially lethal? I'm talking a possible "accident" where you could have been an innocent bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time, or you might have been able to make a better decision before hand, but didn't, and that cascaded into a snowball effect that could have gone really badly.

From my own experiences and recalling this topic with others, driving would be a common one. I believe everyone who has been driving long enough has probably had at least one situation where one second later or sooner or one reaction just a bit too slow would have ended up very badly. On an aside, I remember when I was young and out on my own, I cleared out yards/junk/vegetation/etc and hauled things away for money. In one instance, I was pulling some weeds along the top of a hillside, well it was hilly area that surrounded a series of tennis courts below. There was no fencing around the top perimeter. ( This was a different time in the world, where fewer measures were made to keep people from splattering themselves everywhere in our society) At some point, I stood up, while I was backing up, then felt a bit of a tingle and stopped dead in my tracks. I looked behind me and over my shoulder. I was literally on the edge of the top of the ledge area above the courts. Had I taken one more step back, I would fallen and it was a far enough fall where I would have gone splat and likely not ever gotten back up again. Because I was getting poor sleep, poor nutrition, and doing heavy labor most days, I was really exhausted and I wasn't paying attention as well as I should have. This was on a day where the courts weren't going to open up again for a day and a half or so. So taking the hypothetical had I barely survived that fall ( I use the term "survive" very loosely here), I could have been pancaked and not been able to move/escape for up to two full days potentially. I'd have to wait for help as a piece of luck, or to wait for the end. I remember slowly lowering myself to my knees and edging my way onto my belly. And I crawled up a ways to get clearance from that edge.

So here is an opportunity for others here to share their experiences. What potential close calls did you have? Are there close calls worth mentioning here that happened to someone you knew personally, like a friend, family member or coworker? Was there any kind of fallout post incident worth mentioning? Was there anything you could have done better now that you have had some time and years to look back on it? Did you have a "guardian angel", i.e. did someone else intervene at just the right moment to save your bacon?

I'll leave this here for others to discuss. (3/30)

 

[kupcho1]

Well, I rode the toboggan down from the Great Wall. I did it a long time ago and a lot has changed since then.
1. There were absolutely no safety measures in place other than guys stationed along the way screaming at you (in Chinese) to - I assume - slow down.
2. It was only the steel half pipe. Nothing else.
3. They added fencing. Most of it is just after the curves, which I guess make sense. They probably just put it where most of the bodies ended up.
4. They've given the guys flags.
5. There's a little structure at the top (with the roof) that has some instructions in English (as well as Chinese)

I wish I'd had a GoPro back then (had they even been invented yet). It took this guy almost 3 1/2 minutes. I think did it in less than 2. I know for sure I was up along the top of the half pipe multiple times (although I'd try and slow down a little bit when I was due to see a screaming Chinese safety guy). My only regret is not finding the toboggan until my 3rd time at the Wall.

I went down first so I could film the rest of the family arriving at the bottom of the ride. I told my son (who was 11 at the time) that that was the closest he's come to death so far. I'm not sure if that made it a better or worse experience for hiim.

Good times.

 

[Dezbelief]

If there are guardian angels, I must have put a slew of them through their paces. I debated even posting in this thread, nobody would believe what I've been through in my life. This is by no means a complete list, I hesitate to tell too much of my story.

Let's start with traffic accidents. I have been in two roll overs, one I was driving and one I was the passenger. I had no major injuries in either. I was ejected out of a 60's model F100 after getting T-Boned by a car running a red-light at over 60 mph. I do have some back pain from that one. There have been other close calls not involving accidents.

I fell backwards off a high dive onto concrete. One day at the end of swim lessons the class was allowed to jump off the high dive. Of course all of us kids were going fast up the ladder, jump and get back in line as quickly as we could. The faster you go the more jumps you get before you have to go. I was hauling b**t up the ladder and as I reach for the curve in the handrail at the top my hand slips because of my speed and how wet the handrail is from all of us kids. Luckily I fall straight back with my body landing perfectly flat and then my head hitting. The breath was knocked out of me and I was fighting for every little breath. I was still fighting for air when the ambulance arrived. Luckily getting the air knocked out of me was the worst part, no breaks and no head injuries.

I have been robbed on the job at gunpoint, not my current job. I have also had guns pointed in my direction by careless friends with no gun education. I was always quick to move myself or the gun away from my direction and give my friends the lecture on gun safety their parents never did. I have also had a gun pointed at me by my Aunt, a lil h**lfire that lived alone with small kids in the country. I learned not to show up unannounced. I have been standing next to someone who has been shot.

My dad worked maintenance at an apartment complex in a metropolitan area. I went to stay with him one summer when I was 17. My dad had befriended many of the residents. One of the residents was in his twenties and from the country. The young man had gotten caught up in the fast times of the big city and gotten himself indebted to some people you don't want to be. He was unable to pay his debt so he was going to skip town. I was helping him move his stuff out of his apartment, after we were done we go to the coke machine by the pool to get some drinks. He gets his coke, steps to the side of the machine, between me pushing the button and my coke falling three shots ring out. He hits the ground and then gets up and runs to my Dad's apartment. He collapses after getting inside. He got hit one time with the bullet entering his abdominal area and lodging in his spine pushing on but not breaking his spinal chord. I was already wise enough to know not to go down the path this young man had traveled, my lesson learned was don't count on a 9mm to put someone down and keep them down. I have never owned a 9mm and don't plan on it.

There are more stories, too many.

 

[arrow1]

Back in my skydiving days, after an eight-person jump I opened my chute and another jumper opened at the same altitude. We were facing each other a hundred feet or so apart, and we flew towards each other and he flew directly into my canopy. we were both suspended under his chute while he tried to untangle himself. We were able to talk to each other, and needed to make a decision as we were losing altitude. At 1800 feet, he told me to cut away my chute. I did that going back into freefall and then safely opening my reserve chute at 1200 feet. He safely landed still tangled in my main chute.

 

[FiredMartz]

I rolled a 71 Ford Galaxie CONVERTIBLE down a 60 foot tree filled ravine in 1975 at 16 yrs old.....top was up but we flipped 3 times.....landed wheels up with Black Sabbath Master of Reality still blaring in 8-track....not a scratch

 

[SFBayDuck]

Water is the theme here. In college I made the super smart decision after a football game to "shoot the rapids" in the Willamette River under the footbridge to Autzen, joining several others in just wading out into the water and picking up my feet to float down. Alcohol may have been involved. And oh yeah, I can't swim. But I had watched others go and it looked simple, everyone just floated down and got pushed to the shore about 30 yards downstream. But somehow after a few seconds I ended up upside down with my feet above me and my head under water, frantically waving my arms trying to get my head out. After what seemed like an eternity, but was only several seconds, I basically stopped fighting, exhausted. And right then my hips/butt hit something and flipped me back upright and my head came out of the water. I managed to get over to the shore, looking up to see several people had come in the water after me, but as I had gone downstream over 100 yards nobody was very close yet. Walked back to my house and passed out on the lawn for a few hours, not sure I've ever been more physically exhausted.

The other one was when I was a kid, 8-9 years old, and my dad and I were digging clams in a bay at low tide on a cold day in December. After awhile we look up and the boat had drifted away from us as the tide rapidly came in (despite having an anchor out with some slack - apparently not enough), and the sand bar we were on was quickly disappearing under the water. My dad stripped down and went swimming after the boat in the frigid water. His recollection was that there were dolphins swimming next to him (not too likely), and that as he got to the boat he couldn't pull himself up and in, he just didn't have any strength and was going hypothermic. The next thing he knows he's lying in the bottom of the boat, and he was able to get the motor started and get back to me on the sandbar before it completely disappeared.

I'm not much of a spiritual guy, but in both cases it seems possible "something" gave us each a nudge when we really needed it, it just wasn't our time.

 

[nirad3]

Two major ones I can think of. When I was in middle school, I worked at the local massive swap meet during Christmas break. Kids would just walk around and ask the sellers if they needed help stocking, setting up/closing down, etc.... so me and a buddy worked for a women's shoe seller. Edward Hecht. I still remember that jerk's name after 35 years. Anyways, we were helping him tear his tent down after the day was over and it was super windy. Me and a few other guys were holding the tarp in place with rope. Huge gust of wind, everyone let go except me and I literally went flying up into the air and slammed against the side of the seller's box truck 10 feet up and got lodged between all the metal framing of the tent. I was stuck up there for a minute or so before they got me down.

And I was in a major single-car accident on I-5 north of San Diego on Super Bowl Sunday in 2003. Had I been sitting up in the rear cab rather than laying down I would have been crushed like my buddy who was sitting in the front passenger seat. He unfortunately died on impact. Driver barely had a scratch. I spent the night in the hospital with a concussion, cracked rib and vertebrae and all sorts of cuts, etc. That was not fun.

 

[Nick Vermeil]

I once ate at Arbys. Still have nightmares.

 

[Oracle]

The rapids in extreme whitewater rafting can get scary, although no one should do this without having years of white water rafting experience behind them.

 

[ChicoCat]

I was coming to work one time at like 5:30 in the morning; pitch black. I was going up a two lane commercial highway when I noticed a car turned around the opposite way in the middle of my direction; along with a couple of other cars. I pulled up; stopped and got out and there was a lady sitting in that car...and in the lanes in the other direction another car. The lady was just babbling...she had been drunk, swiped the guy in the lane next to her, jumped the median and stopped (didn't hit anyone else). I was standing behind the car she had hit... talking to the guy who she had sideswiped when I suggested to him that he put his hazards on. I stepped to the side when he got into a car and about a second later another car plowed into the back of him at about 40 MPH right where we had been standing. Needless to say, I was shocked. If that car was a second earlier or the guy went to turn his hazards on a second later...we probably would have been sandwiched between the two cars. The saddest part was the guy who got into his car to turn on his hazards got completely jacked up from being rear ended. I saw him get thrown around when he got hit and when he got out of his car he was just walking all janky like a marrionette on a couple of broken strings. I was yelling at him just to sit down but he was just bouncing around; not saying anything and not paying attention to me at all. At that point, two cop cars showed up. They took my statement and I left. Never found out what happened to that guy.