- Almost got abducted by pedo but a cop rolled by
- Mom and I got rear ended by a dump truck that left us hospitalized for weeks
- Renal failure due to something wrong with my kidney (I was too young to understand what) but surgeons were able to fix it without removing kidney
- Almost drowned surfing…at least three times
- Hit and run when on my bicycle. That got me a nice new bike, which was nice.
- Near miss with a car while bombing a hill on my Powell Peralta skateboard. It should count as multiple because, in hindsight, bombing a hill that steep, that fast, on that board, with no gear or helmet, was in itself a near death experience every time.
- Near miss with a territorial tiger shark while surfing.
- Near miss with a territorial moray eel while scuba diving
- Wrecked my motorcycle
- Rode off a cliff while back country snowboarding…alone. Please don’t be this stupid. That was very dumb and 100% on me. Always bring a buddy. I should know better.
- Hit a hidden rock while snowboarding that caused me to whip the back of my head into the ground so hard that I almost passed out. When I checked my helmet I saw that my head must have landed on another hidden rock because there was a quarter sized hole where the rock had pierced. It was very likely a fatal hit had I not been wearing a helmet.
- Suffered from chronic and acute insomnia that almost drove me to suicide. Reality gets tilted when you don’t sleep at all.
- Felt not good. Went to the ER and was rushed to surgery. Turns out most of the arteries on my heart were blocked 93+%. One was 99% blocked. Ended up getting four stents but at least I dodged a bypass and a heart attack. Close though. Had I waited, maybe even a day, I would have had a massive heart attack. *Got cancer. Beat cancer. Fuck cancer.
EDIT: Reading someone else’s comment reminded me of a time when I was very young (5?) where we had an aquarium on top of a tall dresser. I opened the bottom drawer and climbed on the lip so that I can could see the fishies. The whole thing toppled over on me. The dresser landed on my lower body and the aquarium landed on me, shattering. I clearly remember my mom screaming in panic, my neighbors lifting the dresser off me, the terrazzo floor cover in bloody water and me yelling at the top of my lungs for someone to save the fish that was dying next to me. It didn’t make it. Oooh boy, there’s trauma there. That memory hit a nerve for some reason.
Wrecked my motorcycle
Absolute classic. Love those death machines.
Getting a crouton stuck in my windpipe. Your body can and will try to take over when life is on the line. Fortunately, I could still breathe a little and I had to wait for saliva to dissolve it. A scary 15 mins or so of small breathes.
I drive for my job, so like… daily. Lol. People do genuinely dangerously stupid things on the road and a lot just ignore it because of how dangerous driving already is. I think some of it can definitely be chalked up to honest mistakes but there have been many times I’ve seen a driver danger my own life, their own, or other people (or a combination of the three) out of what appeared to just be total and complete ignorance. I feel so incredibly lucky to have yet to be involved in a crash or to even witness one, but usually at least once a shift I do witness a close call that sometimes does involve me.
And I’m not much of an urban planner so I genuinely don’t know what I can contribute to fix this, but so much of it seems to be an insane impatience and a treatment of driving as some kind of race. I see people hourly roll through stop signs, speed through red lights, ignore right-of-way in roundabouts, shove themselves into lanes, cut people off, etc. When I’m driving in my city’s downtown I usually see drivers come within INCHES of pedestrians who are crossing the street just to get to the next red light 2 seconds faster. And people have this inherent obsession with speeding. It’s like some kind of cult. If you don’t speed they treat you like utter garbage. I’ve definitely driven on roads that felt 10 mph or 20 mph faster than the speed limit, but most of the time I feel like the speed limit like makes sense, you know? I speed due to the nature of my job (pizza delivery) but I usually only go 5 over at most. 9 times out of 10 though I get tailgated by some speed junkie who needs to go dangerously above the limit just to get to the red light 10 seconds faster.
And you know I’ve made mistakes too. I’m not perfect. I’ve rolled through stops, failed to signal, ran a few reds when I spaced out, etc. It’s just shocking on the daily to see sheer ignorance to the rules of the road. At this point I’m almost numb to it. Just the other day I was driving to a store on my off time and witnessed somebody come within inches of a head-on collision because they creeped into the intersection to make a left turn (this happens every time I drive). The near-victim of this insane stupidity had some really quick reactions otherwise with that speed they might have hit me too. All I was thinking was that I wish I had my dashcam plugged in.
TL:DR: I drive a lot for my job. I deliver pizza. I am constantly shocked by the sheer stupidity on the road and it’s probably from impatience and ignorance of speed limits. I witness people almost dying on a daily if not weekly basis. Just yesterday I almost got involved in a head-on collision by somebody who couldn’t be bothered to wait behind the painted white line at a left turn.
Cars are fucking deathtraps and a massive waste of public and private resources.
I’ve always been a proponent of cutting down their use. Also, more stringent licensing requirements until we invest in effective public transportation (which is a hard fight already as manufacturers and even police have interest in dangerous vehicles being sold to the public).
Also, why the fuck do we have so many gigantic trucks on the road for shipping? Invest in fucking rail freight.
And, on a personal note, my grandmother still has her license and there’s no fucking way that’s safe for anyone.
As a MASSIVE fan of cars, there is literally no reason to have any cars in a city centre.
Wanna get to the other side of the city? Bus/team
Need private transport? Bike
Cars suck for city transport
Totally, I mean a lot of my gripe with cars is about how they’re currently used and their safety and environmental impact.
I recognize the need for low occupant vehicles, but definitely also see that we’ve blown past any reasonable projection of their use.
As far as cutting cars out of cities goes, it’s pretty important to cut commuter cars as well. Commuter trains are safer, way more easily regulated and keep cars out of the city.
I shed no tears for the owners of parking lots and ticket writers who would lose out with an increase in commuter trains. They bet on the continuation of inefficient forms of transportation and sought to capitalize on convenience, let 'em fail like commercial real estate and have the cities restructure their downtowns when the prices on those buildings plummet.
I agree with most everything you said. My store actually even allows us to use mopeds but man… not doing that with the way these roads are.
With the licenses, I actually kind of find it crazy how lax we are about them in the US. Like, I’m in Washington and we’re kind of known for having the hardest test in the country, and all I did was parallel park, park on a hill, back around a corner, and park in a parking bay. That’s it. And it’s so easy in fact that you can fail all four of these sections and still pass as long as you’re fine when driving to and from each section, with the way the points system is set up. You start at 100, each section is 5 points and you need 80 points left over to pass. Looking back on it now those things are definitely like some of my least worries on the road. It’s nice that I can parallel park, but I think it was much better that I learned lane changing, you know?
Exactly! When I took my test way back when, they didn’t even have me drive on a highway… Like, most of the crazy shit I see happens on or entering/exiting highways. I feel like mandating that in a test would keep a lot of people from danger.
And I get that people need to get to work and do errands, but the standard for getting a license is so low that their convenience comes at the expense of public safety and increased private costs, medical, legal, tickets to police vultures that just fund further oppression.
We treat driving as a necessity and cut all corners to keep selling environment destroying death traps to every member of the public. Driving is very convenient, but also inherently dangerous and the testing involved needs to accurately reflect the fatal consequences that occur wayyy too frequently.
Even if the consequences aren’t fatal, victims end up with significant injuries and even life changing disabilities. Then they’re compensated fucking pennies by greedy, profit pinching insurance companies and any actual burden for their treatment, rehabilitation, or stabilization is then borne by the victims and eventually the state.
It’s lazy, demented, and cruel, all the way around. I feel like states should have standing to fuck up auto manufacturers and insurance companies for the massive costs they shift over to the public, but we’ve never really had a justice system so that’s a ways away if it’s even possible.
Dude no kidding, I drove for a living for a while and before I did I loved driving. Since then I get ridiculously anxious on the highways, I hate driving in the city and I even moved away partly to avoid the traffic.
Don’t even have a limp or anything. But I did pull glass out of my face for like 3 years
Fokin’el M8!
All I can say is JFC … glad you’re ok!
Posted this recently on a similar but different question, may as well include it here because it fits:
Exploring an easy cave with a friend. Nothing tricky at all, just one way through, standing room all the way, about 1m wide, ankle deep water flowing through the whole way (walking against the flow).
As we went, the water very slowly became harder to press forwards against. The change was so gradual we were second-guessing it the entire time until it got really strong. We figured it was better to walk against it than with it - at this point it was rushing against our legs, and the thought of slipping and being swept through, bouncing off of the walls, was not great. It felt much easier to keep our footing facing the flow, and also it seemed like we were much closer to the end than the beginning (the cave had an exit at both ends, it was basically a small fork of a river that cut through a hill).
So we pressed on, until we got to a point that should have been a small scramble up a few bits of rock - except now there was a massive flow of water hitting us at chest level as we tried to climb it. We were both completely unable to push against it and get up. We were also now convinced that the cave was filling up with water so we had to get out - which now meant turning around and doing the whole length again but with the water hitting the back of our legs the whole way.
Oh and the water was freezing, coming off of some snowy mountains. So for about an hour, we held onto the sides of the cave and slowly tried to move steadily through, while by this point I had almost no feeling in my frozen feet to help with keeping my footing. It was like guesswork every step.
By the time we got out, the water had risen by almost a metre I’d say. Not much but the extra force was insane, and the feeling of a cave filling up with water behind you was not easily ignored. Anyway, turns out there was heavy rainfall way up river from us, always check the forecast and think beyond where you are when dealing with rivers and caves!
- Took a muscle relaxant I’m allergic against and nearly died on my bathroom floor while unable to call for help, face planted into the ground, sweating and tasting blood, at 3am about 5m away from my deep sleeping girlfriend.
- aqua planing with my motorcycle in a turn
- skidding on ice with my motorcycle
- wrapping my motorcycle around a tree
- getting under a semi truck with my motorcycle
- accidentally taking drugs which cause serotonin syndrome
- drowning in a wave pool because I slipped (clinically dead for about a minute)
- having a cramp at sea 500m from the shore
- hitting a tree on skis at night alone
- taking the wrong drugs, dissociating and waking up from the feeling of cold train tracks vibrating against my cheeks
- falling out of my bed 10cm from metal feet of my desk
Come to think of it, I really need to get a motorcycle again. That was fun.
Do you mean times in which I made a lucky mistake that avoided me running into a fatal issue, or times in which I was in a fatal issue that didn’t finish me off?
Yes
Most of them are dog attacks or almost-dog attacks. Nobody seems to know how to keep a dog on a leash. I was attacked by one while strolling and couldn’t escape and another time narrowly avoided another one. Me and dogs don’t seem to get along except for my own.
I was at a lagoon/pool trying to traverse across when something distracted me enough that I fell in the deep area and started drowning because I can’t swim. The person who should’ve helped was distracted and so a family member stepped in at the last minute. Same fate almost happened to me due to some very sinky mud.
I narrowly avoided being crushed under a burning foundation by not being around for a lot longer.
I was at a psych ward for reasons I would rather not mention here, and psych ward visitors have a tendency to do something hostile and end up getting a room faster. There was an uproar that broke out because one of the patients was the son of one of the nurses, and someone else felt jealous that a patient had come in with love and support built-in into the visit, and the jealous person started threatening people, and I guess I avoided that by not really minding I was being threatened, so he (the one threatening everyone) decided to assault me, in the NSFW way.
Hiking mountain, misty/rainy midday. Summit didn’t look like a summit to me, and I’m not an experienced hiker. Had forgotten my hiking boots so was hiking in flat-bottom running shoes.
Arrive at summit, of course, want to walk to edge to enjoy my hard-earned view. Begin walking down incline to my “perceived summit” (mistakes intensify). Realize it sure is a steep path. Total path from arrival to “perceived summit” was ~10 meters. 5 meters from edge I slip, ow, that hurt. Oh, I’m sliding. Time ceases to exist, this all feels like forever. Quickly flatten body such that backpack grabs surface.
Where am I? How far did I slide? 2-3m, panic, I am more than halfway towards the edge in an ever increasing steepness summit. Everything is wet. I launch myself to my feet and rush away from the ledge, processing what just happened. Oh. I see.
Strangers freaked out, friends freaked out, everyone has adrenaline. Sit and consider what occurred, try to calm myself but the panic of existential dread was persistent for the next six hours or so.
Good hike.
First one was right at my birth, as I came out feet first and was apparently almost strangled by the umbilical cord which was around my neck.
When I was about 5, a large wardrobe fell over and missed me by just a couple cm.
Most recent one was a few weeks ago when I was riding my bike. An oncoming BMW cut a corner and, as the road was inside a ravine, couldn’t see me and almost crashed into me.
I forget how old I was, but at some point as a kid I had this really big marble, and as dumb kids sometimes do, I kept sticking it in my mouth for no reason. Eventually I accidentally half-swallowed it and it was big enough to completely block my throat. I couldn’t breathe or make a sound, and I don’t think anyone else was even home at the time anyway. I legit thought I was gonna die, as much as I could process that as a kid, but I somehow managed to cough the marble up after a few seconds. I distinctly remember thinking to myself “okay don’t do that again,” and then absently sticking the marble back in mouth a minute later anyway.
Fiancee and I were hiking into and camping at a state park. We got a little turned around and low on water, so I was a bit out of it and tired. I saw an interesting looking log across the trail and stepped over the smaller end of it. It was around 9:30am, so things were a little cold. I stopped and turned to wait for my fiancee and right as she was about to step on the log I realized it was an enormous 6-ish foot long rattlesnake. I grabbed her arm right before she put her foot down on the bastard and yanked her as hard as I could and backed up a step or two. Somehow the snake hadn’t noticed me yet, but it noticed me wrenching my fiancee away from it and it went into full coil-up-and-rattle mode. Had that thing bitten me I would have been in a bad place because I was already dehydrated. If it had bitten my wife, both of us would have been in a bad place because we were closer to our destination with fresh water than to our car.
Oh god which time.
I was coming down the highway, cruising the speed limit. No sign of slowed traffic in front of me. Left lane, construction wall to my left, no shoulder. I see a cop on the side, lights on, glance over for maybe 1 or 2 seconds to see what’s going on, look back in front and I’m 10 feet from the back of an 18 wheeler dead stopped, all lanes dead stopped traffic. My lizard brain took over and I managed to skid diagonally across the entire highway to the right shoulder without even thinking about it.
That’s the one that stands out where I wasn’t injured. It’s shit like that that makes me wonder if we die in moments like that and wake up in an alternate timeline or something.
Driving along a 70mph section of highway in the early AM hours and thinking ‘those headlights look way too close to the median…’ only to realize some drunk had turn onto am exit ramp thinking it was an entrance, so they where going the wrong way down the highway.
This was before the time of cell phones being common so ended up tracking down a local officer at a gas station I knew them to frequent at night, hoping they somehow caught them before anyone got killed.
The closest was probably a mountainbiking accident.
We were going along side a hill and to the right of us was a wall going down holding the earth up. Well there came an obstacle up which was a big roller to the right up the hill a bit and then down again to the ledge. The roller took a slight curve and you needed to curve back on the trail to not go over the ledge. I broke the first rule of mountainbiking and looked down the ledge which was like 3-4m high instead of ahead. Drove straight of it but somehow managed to grab a branch of a tree that was just above the ledge. My bike fell down and i just hung in the tree allowing me to safely drop down and carry the bike back up.
Nothing happened to me but i don’t want to imagine what would have happened if i didn’t grab that branch.
As a kid (maybe 6-8) at the beach. My dad was on the shore and I waded out and kept going further and further, until the sand bank fell off and I dropped what felt like 5m underwater and couldn’t find my way back. I wasn’t a bad swimmer but panic set in and I got disoriented. Felt like I was treading water for 15 minutes but it was more like 3 until a family friend saw what was happening and made it out to me to pull me back to the shore.