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Original poster

Do you have a That was Close moment?

181 replies

Daleksatemyshed · 05/05/2021 18:58

Local news had a gas explosion in a house, terrifying footage of part of the house going up like a rocket, several people were hurt and the house is a complete wreck. Some years ago my DM (who was elderly with Dementia) turned on a couple of burners on the cooker but didn't light them, I arrived pre work to drop something off to a house reeking of gas!
I got the house aired out and had a Gas fitter cut off the supply.
Watching the news brought home how close my DM was to disaster and probably serious injury. I still feel guilty I didn't sort this before hand.
Anyone else care to sooth my guilt?

OP posts:
theluckiest · 05/05/2021 20:23

Oh god Alex Thanks I'm so sorry about your sister. Horrendous.

I remember seeing a head-on collision as a child. The car in front was hit by an idiot driver who was overtaking on a blind bend. Bloody awful.

I also try not to think about the amount of times DH has had near-misses when cycling to & from work. He's very safety-conscious but has been knocked off his bike twice by drivers pulling out of side roads and nearly hit by speeding cars a few times.

JeffAmentsBassGuitar · 05/05/2021 20:24

Not me but my DM. She worked in a shop during the Troubles. One day she finished cashing up, locked up and walked out. She was the last one out and a bomb went off in the shop a few minutes after she left.

HoulYerWheesht · 05/05/2021 20:25

I got off a train and just about far enough away to be safe, before a bomb went off inside it.

lonel · 05/05/2021 20:26

Those smart motorways are fucking lethal. Who the hell came up with it?
I know. I hate them.
Alex Flowers

JeffAmentsBassGuitar · 05/05/2021 20:31

Oh Alex. Flowers So sorry for your loss.

fibeee · 05/05/2021 20:34

Yes. I left the handbrake off my car by accident. It rolled when I got out of the car and I was almost crushed against a wall. It was 10 years ago now and I still shudder and feel anxious when I think about it.

MsAdoraBelleDearheartVonLipwig · 05/05/2021 20:35

@AlexCabot Flowers

My Dh once had a car accident. He got hit head on by someone overtaking on the approach to a bridge. His car was spun off the road and bounced off a telegraph pole and back into the road. About a metre further on and his car would have gone off the bridge and on to the railway line below.

We were on holiday in the Caribbean when a hurricane was coming, the day before we were due to go home. They were going to move everyone into the centre of the island but luckily the weather improved and they let us fly out. When we got home it was all over the news that the Dominican Republic and Haiti had suffered horrendous damage and deaths from Hurricane Georges blazing directly through the middle of the island.

MsAdoraBelleDearheartVonLipwig · 05/05/2021 20:36

Oh and dh was in the Arndale centre in Manchester years ago the day before a bomb went off in it. That’s three close calls he’s had.

TheVolturi · 05/05/2021 20:37

Driving on the motorway the other week, a car overtook us with a loads of really long thick planks of wood hanging out the back, looked really unstable. In my head I thought it was a bit Final Destination. Came off the motorway a few junctions down and that car was pulled over at the side with the wood all over the road. So lucky it didn't happen on the mway!

Emelene · 05/05/2021 20:42

My 2 year old had a button battery in her hand and was reaching to put it in her mouth. I saw something round and shining in her hand and grabbed it off her. Turns out my husband had changed the batteries in his bike light, put the old batteries in his coat pocket and it had fallen out on the floor without him realising. It was such a scary moment. Sad Don’t think my husband will do something like that again either after the discussion we had!

fiheka · 05/05/2021 20:43

Enormous lorry on a rural road coming towards me at some speed on the wrong side of the road. There was a layby just on my left and I managed to yank the car in at some speed. The lorry missed me by centimetres. He didn't stop, but I saw his face and it was as if he hadn't seen me. I don't know if he was half asleep? I sat in the layby shaking but glad to be alive.

Letsgetreadytocrumble · 05/05/2021 20:46

Someone's going to have one of those in a couple of days... there's an out of control rocket due to land on or around 10 May, and they won't know where until about six hours before it hits.

Wait.... What?!!!

CuckooSings · 05/05/2021 20:47

My ex had dd1+2 when they were around 6 and 5. DD2 also has autism and has very little awareness of danger. DH and I had gone into town to meet some friends, the friends were late so we decided to walk towards the station to meet them. Suddenly a small child crashed into me - I grabbed her almost instinctively and then realised it was dd2 in full meltdown flight! If she hadn't crashed into me she would have gone straight into a busy road full of cars and buses. Worse bit was when we rang ex he hadn't noticed he'd lost her. If our friends train hadn't been late we would not have been there and dd2 would have been killed. Needless to say ex no longer has contact but I still dream about it and shudder to think how close we came.

AgeLikeWine · 05/05/2021 20:57

I borrowed a mate’s car when I was 18. It was an absolute shed of an old Morris Marina (a crap 1970s car) with, it turned out, bald tyres.

Driving along a busy, single carriageway A road in the rain, I lost control on a left-handed bend, spun across the road and collided with the wall on the other side of the road. I wasn’t going particularly fast, the crash wasn’t very dramatic and I wasn’t hurt. If a lorry or bus had been coming in the other direction at that precise moment, however, I would have had no chance of avoiding it. I would have been a statistic, and it’s purely down to luck that I wasn’t.

MrsArchchancellorRidcully · 05/05/2021 21:09

I was driving east bound towards the m62 towards Leeds. Just after Warrington, there is a wide slip to m62 west bound, 3 std lanes to follow m6 NB and one land at the left to take m62 EB.

As was fairly usual, there was stationary traffic on m62 EB lane. I was at back and looked in my rear view to see a huge Eddie stobart lorry at a speed where he could not have seen the queue.

In a split second I looked right to see if I could pull into Lane 1 of m6 but it was full of traffic doing 60 odd and I was stationary. I was about to pull into hard shoulder when lorry saw me and almost went onto one set of wheels are swerved into the slip to Liverpool wb at the last second. In front of me was another lorry so I would have been squashed flat.

The driver then had to cheek to indicate right and push in front of me to get to the Leeds rd! I used time to take all his details including driver number etc and gave Es a piece of my mind!!!

frumpety · 05/05/2021 21:13

A horse doing a fly buck coming through a gateway from another field missed my head by less than a centimetre, moved my hair, if the big bugger had made contact I would be dead.

Pulling out of a junction in the snow onto a busy A road and sliding across into the path of a lorry, how he managed to manoeuvre around me in those conditions I will never know, I think we both aged quite a bit in those few seconds.

babbaloushka · 05/05/2021 21:24

DD1 was seriously, seriously ill and unresponsive in PICU with suspected meningitis. She just started getting better, still don't know how or why, they never explained it and she came out of hospital a week later. I will never, ever forget the look on DH's face when they said she might not wake up. The face of man who had just broken.

babbaloushka · 05/05/2021 21:28

Also on a motorbike as a teenager, windy country roads and I was soaring along, a lorry came around the corner and I managed to mount the only bit of verge that was lowered to road level, seconds before it rushed past. 3 years later my dear cousin was killed in a motorbike accident involving a lorry.

thelightishere · 05/05/2021 21:29

@Honeybobbin

My DS nearly stepped out in front of a truck. I was parked up waiting for him to pop into the shop and another driver spotted it and waved frantically. I realised and screamed my son's name at the top of my voice. He stopped a split second before he would have been mown down. It keeps me awake at 3am quite regularly.
Shock how old was your DS?!
Twinkie01 · 05/05/2021 21:31

Bent down to pick up my car keys I'd dropped, was v v windy and a slate from the roof literally grazed the top of my head. It still makes me chilly thinking about it!

JesusInTheCabbageVan · 05/05/2021 21:35

@Letsgetreadytocrumble

Someone's going to have one of those in a couple of days... there's an out of control rocket due to land on or around 10 May, and they won't know where until about six hours before it hits.

Wait.... What?!!!

Annoyingly can't link at the moment, but Google 'Out of control Chinese rocket' and it'll come up!
Pieceofpurplesky · 05/05/2021 21:40

I turned down a job. At the world trade centre in New York, two months before the planes hit. I was on one months notice ...

thelightishere · 05/05/2021 21:40

@lonel

When my son was about three we were staying in a hotel in France on the fourth floor (no lift!) and he was walking up the stairs in front of me. It was one of those stairwells where you go round the central shaft and you can see right down all the floors. At one point, almost at the top, he slipped and put his hand out to the upright spindle on the banister to steady himself - but it wasn't attached, it swang away and I saw he was about to fall through the gap. It was awful. I grabbed him just in time and I was so upset but tried not to scare him. Then I left him with DH and went down to bollock the manager in my heartfelt but imperfect French. They knew exactly what I meant so they obviously hadn't seen it as a risk and they sent someone up to nail it down immediately. I dreamt about it for weeks thinking "what if I hadn't been watching him?" "What if I had been more than a step behind?" Shock
Chills reading this - you are a super mum @lonel
HerRoyalNotness · 05/05/2021 21:41

A car bomb went off about 30ft from my apartment. It was night and as I lay in bed the building shook. I thought a bomb might have landed on the roof and lay there waiting for it to go off (ME during the 2nd gulf war). Fortunately it had already and no damage to our building at all surprisingly.

thelightishere · 05/05/2021 21:43

Near miss with some idiot in a truck overtaking a cyclist around a blind bend. Thank god my full attention was on the road and nobody was behind me Angry

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