Close Calls... and the lucky SOB's that survived them

[El Camexican]

Just like the title says. Tell us your story(s) Something that happened to you, a family member or friend that should have ended a lot worse than it did.

[tripledog]

The 1980's.

[86T3]

I have 2 and they both occurred in my truck. The first one, I was driving down a 2 lane near Yeahaw Junction, Fl. It was before dawn and extremely foggy. I had a heavy load on my truck and was pulling my trailer and skid steer. I saw some lights coming at me but couldn't tell the depth or what I was seeing because of the fog. I thought I was seeing a truck far down the road. A second later a semi pulled in front of the semi it was passing, couldn't have been more than 200 yards in front of me. A couple seconds ahead of schedule and I wouldn't even have had time to let my life flash before my eyes.
The next time wasn't too bad at first, but got a little strange at the end. I was driving up and just got into the Jacksonville limits. I was heading home to Buffalo after a month in FL and was making time in the left lane. I saw brake lights ahead so I let off the gas and put my brakes on enough to make my brake lights come on. The guy in front of me was in a smaller import and didn't know people were slowing down till the person in front of him slammed on their brakes. He slammed his, got squirrely and smacked the wall. He bounced into the side of a semi next to him and stopped in the road facing 8 o'clock from his original direction. I stopped about 5' shy of him, problem over, right? No. The airbag gave him a concussion so he's facing me semi conscious, foot on the floor. The car takes off towords me so I have to slam my truck in gear and pull off to the right so he doesn't hit me. As this is happening, the light pole that was anchored right near where he hit falls down on the semi he hit the side of, a Coupe feet in front of my truck. Sounds like a fishing story? That's why we have camera phones.

[Jmoozy27]

Hell of a thread el camexican, I like your style. Let's flip the script a little bit, literally. Well I wasn't always an angel. When I was sixteen 3 classmates and I took a trip from south Louisiana to south of the border. Nuevo Laredo to be exact. About a nine hour hike from back home. 3 of four of us had never been out of Louisiana much less out of the country.we ditched class the Friday before spring break and hauled as$ to the border. Stayed there all weekend and made some crazy deals with a few natives for all sorts of contraband. Went back to the states, high-tailed it to the feedback Riviera (Panama city) and rocked out with our cawks out. Made it home with some blurry memories and a little extra spending change. Woke up the following morning, while reading the paper noticed an article titled "When spring breaking goes south" about some American kids who went to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico and 3 of the 4 didn't return. If I didn't feel like a lucky SOB at that point. Close one.

[Samjp22]

IF YOU DON'T HAVE A STRONG STOMACH I WOULDN'T RECOMMEND LOOKING AT THE PICTURES.

September 24, 2012. Two days after my 17th bday! Decided to hop on the back of my buddys 650 crotch rocket. Last thing I remember is looking down at his speedometer and we were doing 140km/h. Next thing I know I have the front tire of an F350 in the socket of my right armpit and the rest of my body excluding my head are under the truck. Leg/knee was in indescribable pain and wedged up under the truck. I still remember screaming at the fireman because they said they were just going to pull me out. I was not in any way going to let them do that. Told them to jack the truck up and they did. In and out of consciousness I went and next thing I know I wake up in Edmonton hospital after surgery. Shattered my left femur in about 30 pieces. Followed by two more surgeries that month. One for infection and then an emergency surgery from internal bleeding within my leg. I wont bore you with the long azz recovery, lets just say I've probably got the strongest armpits from almost half a year of crutches lol

We ended up hitting the back of a stopped gold dodge half ton. I flew 65ft and then landed underneath that F350. The bike cracked in half and we wrote the truck off. I should be dead but still kicking, just a little less with one of my legs.

Fast forward to today. Leg still hurts almost everyday and when it does I limp. Oh well, not going to let something like that hold me back from doing anything. Mother wasn't too pleased when I brought the 250R home. All she says is "If you hurt yourself and end up in the hospital I'm not sitting there with you everyday" hahaha. After a full day of riding I definitely feel it the next day but that's not going to stop me.
Still have all this hardware in my leg(10 screws and about a 12inch plate and a gnarly 13-14inch scar) Winter days and temperature changes are definitely noticeable with all that metal.

[jakep53]

Holy crap sam! lucky you're still kicken thats crazy! glad your ok though!

I have no stories like this haven't lived long enough...worst thats happend to me is crashed my peewee 50 into a fence when i was like 5 and had my 225dr land on me at the start of the year!

[Billy Golightly]

About 2-3 months ago I was leaving my GF at the time's house one morning to go to work. The wipers on my daily driver had been shitty for weeks (months?) and it was one of those mornings where the sun was bright as F&*%^ and I had mildew on the windshield that just smeared when I ran them. I had like 4 blocks to go to the office, so it wasn't far. I turn out of the neighborhood onto a very busy and dangerous little section of 2 lane in the city limits (where everyone still runs 60mph and the streets are narrow enough your mirrors about touch one another, everyone has one of those in their town ). I go up exactly 1 block, and stop to make a left hander down another street towards the office. I cannot see , its like having high beams at night on a dirty smeared windshield. I'm stopped in the intersection now, trying to decide if the little bit of light I have coming through and not seeing any shadows or anything move is enough for me to decide to make the left hander or not.

I took about a half second pause while I thought about this and started rolling down the driver side window to stick my head out and look (The windshield really was that bad...), I got the window about half way down and a 1 ton pickup comes whizzing by, before I even get my head stuck out. I had no idea it was coming, If I had not stopped and listened to my intuition just that fraction of a second to not turn, and to roll down the window, I'd be deader than right now, without a doubt. That was a pretty scary/humbling experience right then because it really was like that instant of a second, If I hadn't stopped and decided to roll down the window I would have been hit head on as I started to turn 100%, no doubts or room for anything else to have happned.

Put new wipers on and amonia'ed my windshield later that morning also.

[atc007]

And unfortunately,,,, The OLDER we get, the MORE stories just like this we have ^^^^^ Now,was it God, Jesus, Quantum Physics,common sense,or good luck, you had to ROLL your window down???

[Buck Snort]

I work in a sawmill and about a year ago I had a major close call. I reached to grab a 9ft 2X6 that had gone sideways and was laying on top of about another ten boards, as I reached to grab it the tip of the board hit the belt of the lug loader. The board flew straight in the air flipping around end to end. The board actually grazed the end of my nose and took my hard hat off my head. My hat was flung 20 yards behind me. That board would have tore my head off if it had made contact. This story also works for El's other thread. If I had slowed down for a second and stopped the chains, nothing would be moving. I got mad and rushed in over a board. These modern mills run at incredible production speeds but I don't have too!

[Jmoozy27]

When I arrived at this single vehicle incident, state police had already close I-10 and were staged about a half mile back. There was a young guy wearing a uniform of the responsible party. So I figured the guy was a safety guy/internal investigator. (In most cases the driver of the truck is air lifted by ems and is not in good shape) low and behold this dude is the driver twenty two years old and crawled out of this wreck after rolling over 1.5 times. That's not the best part, the tanker is holding 5000 gallons of 50% peroxide solution and is actively leaking. Saddle tank is leaking a small amount of diesel so I have my guys berm downhill and place a butyl basin under the tank to contain the fuel. The little dude asks me "why u worried bout dat it's only diesel" dumba$$ has no clue that if fuel mixes with peroxide it spontaneously combusts. Long story short we worked all night getting that tank transferred and the road opened. When the recovery tanker arrived he let me know that guy was one of their best driver and it was a shame that he was gonna loose his job. Dumb fucker didn't even know what he was hauling and I don't know how he made it out of that truck alive. That SOB dodged death twice in an hour.

[briano]

I walked away from a 95mph snowmobile accident. I had just passed my brother and hit a whoop in the trail that was waaaaaay bigger than it looked, when the front of my sled came up, I hit the handlebars with my head and bent the crap out of them. I flew off the sled in the air, from where I left the ground it was 52 paces to where I landed on the trail, my sled was to the left of me and went about 60 paces. It was sitting ready to ride and was still running, the only damage to the machine was bent handlebars and a bent control arm, and I ended up with a sprained wrist.

[El Camexican]

I think I'm going to start posting mine first to last so as to keep some order. This could take a few posts

- 2, the story goes that I wandered out of the house and about a 1/4 mile down the gravel road to a 65mph (at the time) 4 lane highway. A guy on the way to visit his sisters stopped and picked me up and took me with him. Said that I was standing in the middle of a curve watching the cars go by. Turned out that his sister was our next door neighbor.

- Age of 9 I went sucker netting with my Dad. Got set up at the top of a set of rapids. He turned his back for a second and when he looked back I was gone. Three large suckers hit my net all at once and took me down the rapids. I bounced from rock to rock all the way to the bottom. Didn't hit my head once and managed to grab the last rock before I would have been sucked under in my heavy wet clothes. Still had the net and one fish in my hand when they came out to get me!

- Age 10 decided to cut an old aluminum MPH sign I found in the ditch with a 7" X 3/4" grind stone my dad had mounted on his radial arm saw. The first couple inches cut like butter. Then the disk filled with aluminum and started to heat. The stone split in half and one piece clipped my ear as it when past at 70mph. Had I been standing another inch to my right the stone would have gone though my skull like a sledge through a rotten pumpkin.

- Same year got pressed into the doors of the local arena when 2,000 people rushed the place for the remaining 200 standing room tickets. Thanks to a huge guy that helped my dad hold back an area around me (I went down on my knees) and a worker that saw me smeared against the glass door and opened it I got the first two tickets! A bunch of doors got bust out as I was let in. Dad says he still thinks about that one every few weeks.

12, one of my Dad's pilot buddies calls to see if he wants to go fly in fishing for the weekend. He begrudgingly says no as the yard and garden needed a lot of work. The plane crashed on take off Sunday morning, everyone died.

- 14, had a buddy decide to take a shot at a couple pin tails as we were walking out of the swamp for the day. I was a few steps ahead of my buddy (13 at the time)and had all the birds and was holding my gun over my head as they came in. It never crossed my mind that he'd take a shot as the water was near my armpits. As he started to lead them the end of his shotgun ended up beside my head. Blind to my proximity he pulled the trigger with the barrel close enough to my head that I felt the heat of the blast and it tore my ear drum. Bleed for two days after. Another couple inches and he'd have blown my head off.

- 16, riding trikes in a gravel pit up and down a 20' tube flying up and landing and then coming back down. Had never riding there that season. I went up one and all I could see was clear skies and some large earth moving equipment below me. Still don't know how I landed, but I was wearing an open face helmet and my mouth and nose ended up packed solid with sand. It would not had been life threatening, but the trike had landed on me and I was so twisted up under it I couldn't free my arms. I guess I blacked out because the last thing I remembered thinking is "why is the trike still running?" and "I guess I'm going to die here". the next thing I remember is my riding buddy pulling sand out of my mouth with his fingers. I spit, brushed, flossed and coughed up sand for the next few hours. The next morning I remember feeling like I'd been hit by a bus and eating my cereal. As I was chewing some more sand freed up from my gums and crunched in my teeth. Not pleasant.

18, stopped to turn on my RD350. A guy doing 50mph plus drives straight into me with his car. I flew through the air for what seemed an eternity. I remember seeing the streets lights and the darkness of the pavement as I tumbled in flight. I could also hear metal scraping. I thought it was the car still coming so I was trying to run away while flying. A witness said that when I bounced off the pavement the first time (landed on my back and cracked the Nolan in half) I flipped forward and started running like nothing had happened and I was just running. Turned out it was my bike chasing me on the side walk that was making the scary sounds.

19, 5:00am 125mph on a GS550 down the foggy highway with plenty of trace samples still in my blood stream. Thought I saw a flash of a reflector in the mist, so I backed off and started onto the brakes. As I got down to about 60mph I decided it was nothing and started to turn it back on. A millisecond later I realized I was about to hit a box trailer broadside. He'd started to turn onto the highway, but didn't make it so he was backing up. I stopped with the front wheel of the bike under the trailer and my face a couple inches from the box.

20, got jumped by a van full of aboriginals. Got my drunk ass kicked something fierce and ended up with my shoulders wedged between the wheel of a parked car and the curb. As I squirmed there totally helpless the main ass kicker pulled back to punt me square in the skull. At that exact moment my girlfriend jumped him like a squirrel monkey and his boot ended up just grazing my face enough to loosen a couple teeth and bugger up my pretty boy looks for a few weeks. That night ended with three people in the emergency room and a burnt van. Always nice when someone gets the plate # and you have buddies with connections

More to follow...

[tripledog]

Don't buy any lottery tickets, El. Looks like you have already used up your ration of good luck. Makes my life look very tame by comparison. Most of my injuries, although not intentionally, have been self inflicted. Turns out that stupid does in fact hurt.

[fabiodriven]

I've got more of these than I can remember being a motorcyclist, ATV-er, veteran, truck driver, and whatever other dangerous occupations/hobbies I've had. I'll probably have to think for a while for the good ones.

Once when convoying out of BIAP (Baghdad International Airport) the truck two trucks in front of me got hit with and IED. That one doesn't need much more explaining.

I was riding my 84 TT600 (fantastic dirt bike) when I was about 17 or 18. A group of my friends were in a local pit and it was just me on the bike and my buddy on his quad. He let his yahoo friend who thinks he can ride but can't take his quad for a rip and I was tooling around on my TT. It was hot out so my riding gear consisted of sneakers, shorts, a backwards hat, and that's it. Not even a shirt. I took a little loop trail that went out of the pit and looped back in. There was a jump as you came back into the pit and it went right over the main trail. It was a pretty safe setup. Well I came up that path and launched into the pit and just as my tires came off the ground I could see bozo tooling right towards my left side on the quad with my perifrial vision, I didn't even have time to turn my head. I instinctively picked up my left leg and no sooner did I do so when he was making contact with the bike, which was still in the air. He plowed into my TT with the front of that quad and took it right out from under me. The bike was gone now and I landed on the ground right on my feet, completely unscathed. My friends were standing there looking at me in awe, so I took a bow.

Having spent a lot of time driving (mostly dodgy) gravel trucks in Boston, I've had many, many close calls. Probably once every two weeks I'd have the brake pedal to the floor with either 110,000 or 120,000 lbs on a trailer, or upwards of 85,000 on a tri-axle. It is not a good feeling when traffic is stopped in front of you and you have the brakes doing all they can, they can do no more, and you're coming up behind someone. I've braced for impact many a time.

[fabiodriven]

Another time I was driving my boss's Plymouth Laser. It was a 5 speed turbo with only 29k on the clock, fastest K car you'd ever seen! It ripped! I went bombing out of Stoughton, MA on 138 going way too fast and had just crossed the border to Canton, where I didn't know any cops. Well wouldn't you know 'ol Johnny law just happened to be coming by the other way and flipped the blues right on. I yanked it hard over to a self storage facility and shut 'er down. We sat there for about 10 minutes and made our way back out to the road where we could see the officer and the hatch back fox body he had pulled over instead of us. In the dark you could easily mistake the Laser for a hatch back fox body.

About a year and a half ago I had left a local speak-easy after having consumed my fair share of beverages (don't try this at home kiddies). It wasn't a particularly glorious time of my life and I had ridden my Buell to the bar. As I went to leave, my friend stopped me and highly suggested that I not go on my bike. Supposedly my friend two towns away had females there and I wasn't not going there for anything at that point. Totally out of character for me, I had to get on the throttle when I left the establishment and wouldn't you know it but there's 'ol Johnny law again, just happened to be coming the other way again... On went the blues and off went my ignition. I glided as fast as I could into a closed Advanced Auto Parts parking lot and pulled up tight to the building. Johnny went whizzing by and took a tire-screeching hairpin left just after the lot I pulled into, having assumed that was the way I went. I putted back to the bar and parked at my friend's house across the street to adjourn to the couch I was so graciously offered earlier in the evening.

I learned when I was a punk kid that used to drive around aimlessly seeking adventure that if a cop is following you just to pull into a random driveway. If they stop and wait at the end of the driveway, exit the vehicle and walk up to the house. If they're still there then I don't know what you do at that point, as I've never gotten to that point. We had a two vehicle convoy coming home from the bar one night, and I kinda rolled a stop sign a little. It was late enough that 'ol Johnny law didn't appreciate that move and he promptly spun around to express his disdain. My friend following was aware of the maneuver (pulling into a random driveway) so that's the move we went for. We pulled up to the house and 'ol Johnny stopped in the road at the base of the driveway. I exited my vehicle and walked back to my friend's car who was parked behind me. He rolled his window down and asked me what we do now. Before I could answer the sound of screeching tires and an interceptor 4.6 announced Johnny's departure, as it was clear he got another call, and off we went to my real house.

When I was about 21 or 22, myself and two of my friends were in my 86 F-150 heading to the bar in the snow (it's a wonder I'm not an alcoholic). It was snowing pretty heavy at the time and I had bought the truck with a bad engine and just finished swapping it out. I had the old 302 in the bed. We're rolling down 123 in Norton when a drunk driver came directly at us oncoming. I had to veer off the road for him to get by, he almost killed us all. We spun around and followed him back to his place of residence. Upon his exiting of the vehicle, it was more than clear he had more than his fair share of beverages that day. He was unapproachable as his K9 was with him and not appreciative of our presence. The guy didn't even know we were there I think. Later that night on our way home from the bar, I backed up to his front door and we kicked my old long block out of my bed and on to his front door step. Good times.