Do you have a That was Close moment?

[Daleksatemyshed]

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?

I live 5 mins from Mondays explosion. Our house shuddered, it was pretty scary.

I was bodyboarding in Cornwall when I was around 7-8. I had my wrist strap on my board, and I came off it in a huge wave. I was getting back to the surface and I could move my board, I was trapped under it. A boy had lost his board and was hanging on to mine to keep him afloat, but it was directly above me. Must have been only for a few seconds, but it seemed like forwver

A couple of years ago, I was with DD on the M1. It was mid morning in half term so the road was fairly quiet. There was a car towing a trailer with a box van (like used for supermarket home deliveries) on it. I remember saying to DD that the car didn’t look big enough to be pulling the trailer with that load.

The car/trailer/van suddenly started snaking across all lanes of the motorway at great speed. It snaked 4 or 5 times before rolling into the hard shoulder. Fortunately I was on the ball enough, and the road quiet enough for me to just stop in the muddle of the road and put on my hazard lights whilst this played out. If I’d reacted slightly slower, dd and I would have been wiped out by the out-of-control car/trailer/van combo.

We went away for a long weekend and left our cats home alone. One climbed up on the oven and managed to turn the dial so the gas came on.

Luckily my SIL turned up not long after and managed to air the house and turn the gas off for us! The cooker now has covers over the dials and knobs to stop this happening again!

@Maddiemookins16mum it looked horrific on the news, must have been really scary in real life. A friend's Gran used to say you don't go til your numbers up, maybe she had a point!

The letter W fell of the Woolworths sign over the local woolies and miss my mother by inches. The manager gave her a bunch of flowers because of the shop.

When my eldest was 3 I was walking him to nursery and pushing my daughter in her pram, luckily I always made him his my hand when crossing the road rather than holding onto the pram, he had a tie cord and toggle at the bottom of his coat that somehow got caught on the bumper of a car pulling out of the junction, I could slowly feel him being taken from me and I had to leave my daughter in the middle of the road to try and get the drivers attention before he sped up. It was the scariest 3 seconds of my life.

Dp has one. He is in his 40's now and this happened when he was 17/18. To this day he swears he doesn't understand what actually happened.

He told me how when he left school, he did odd jobs one of which was working in a factory. He said it was the type with long rows of products stacked high on pallets that you then needed a forklift to reach.

So he is walking down between the rows of pallets when someone jumped him from behind, he said he was grabbed and forcibly dragged backwards and thrown against a wall. He stands up to face his attacker. And no one is there.

At that point he hears an almighty crash, and watches the pallets stacked meters high come down like dominos and realises if he hadn't been dragged to safety he would have been crushed.

No one came forward as his 'attacker' he himself swears there was literally no one around after he was grabbed. To this day he can't explain what happened (he isn't the slightest bit 'wooo' btw).

Not particularly a close call, as I wasn’t there, but I should have been on an east bound circle line train to Aldgate at around 8:45am on my way to work on 7th July 2001. I was pregnant and had a midwife appointment that morning and was going into work late so I was no where near London at the time, but it did make me feel a bit spooked

Second time, DH and I took the kids to Disneyland Paris - we drove there and back. On the way back, on the motorway just coming into Calais, I saw signs for the ferry and pointed them out to DH as he needed to change lanes. DH not listening carried on in the lane we were in and 2 minutes later a huge lorry came steaming past us, on the wrong side of the motorway, in the lane we should have been in. DH used to drive me nuts as we were always getting lost as he has no sense of direction and never listened but for once I was grateful for it.

I was driving on a fen road (20+ft water filled ditches either side) with DH and DD. I came round a blind bend and there is a car dead in front of me. He’d decided to overtake the car in his lane and he had to be doing 80mph. There was nowhere to go to get out his way (who wants to drown in a ditch?) so I slammed the breaks on and somehow he missed us. To this day I don’t know how.

I then looked in the rear view mirror (to see where twat boy was) and realised there is a car speeding towards the back of us, and they hadn't noticed we’’d stopped. So I slammed the car into first and hoped I’d get us out of the way in time. I did it and they didn’t hit us either.

I pulled up at the first lay-by nearby and threw up. I’ve been driving 32 years, I’ve had accidents but I’ve never been as terrified as I was that day.

We don’t use that road ever now!

"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." @JesusInTheCabbageVan**

It's depressing that people in the UK/West are so clueless about Middle Eastern politics that no one in this whole thread has corrected you @JesusInTheCabbageVan.

I suspect @Zarinea isn't talking about a space rocket: she's talking about a Palestinian rocket fired from Gaza at Israeli citizens in Tel Aviv. Like this one:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-47689684

Unless there's an "out of control" Palestinian rocket from Gaza headed our way I wouldn't be too worried. Although part of me would like to see how the British government responded if Hamas did fire one this way. I somehow don't think it would be met with hugs and flowers.

A couple of years ago on DD1’s birthday we were going to my mums to have cake. As we joined the dual carriageway there was a huge car crash - approx 20 cars and we had to do an emergency stop and were there as the emergency services started to arrive etc: We had all left the house and as we were getting into the car and DH remembered he had forgotten something, he literally opened the front door grabbed it and off we went. If it hadn’t have been for that delay we would have probably been towards the front/middle of the crash. The crash was caused and made worse by freezing fog. Unfortunately one lady lost her life and several people received life changing injuries.

Son nearly stepping out in front of a car. On his birthday. Totally my fault. We had been out for the day and the road was empty but I had DD ahead of me and DS behind ignoring slowest zebra gets eaten. I was in the middle harrying them both to hurry up when a car seemed to come out of nowhere. I screamed No and put my hand out as I could see DS about to run to me. The car did an emergency stop anyway and my son must have heard my panic and actually stayed put. Lesson learnt though. I would never have forgiven myself. The driver was absolutely lovely as I was a blubbing mess and kept saying sorry.

If you like near misses OP then I thoroughly recommend the short story anthology (based on her life so real anecdotes) I am, I am, I am from Maggie O'Farrell. Brilliant writing and makes you thankful.

I worked at the Royal Preston Hospital, my route involved travelling 1 junction on the M6.

In those days Lorries were allowed in all three lanes and the junction had a short on ramp and then the M6 went up a steep hill.

If you knew the route you got on the motorway and into the second lane because all the HGVs slowed down due tot he hill.

So one morning I get on, got into lane 2 and started overtaking a lorry, at the same time the lorry in the outside lane realised he wasn't going as fast as he thought so decided to pull in to the lane I was in.

To this day I think the BMW driver behind me who slowed down so I could slow down and not be squashed between two HGVs.

Another time I was in the third lane of the M1 and my accelerator cable snapped.

And people wonder why I don't like driving unless I have to.

@LoudNowSing

My OH drove off a cliff by accident. He was saved by one of the few trees on the cliff (his car was stopped by the trunk). A meter either side and he and the car would have fallen 30m into a ravine. I actually vomited when I saw the car. OH was completely unhurt.

How on earth did he manage that??

Our car when I was a child didn't have rear seatbelts. I'd have been around 5 and was leaning between the two front seats as I sat in the back IYSWIM. The car stopped at traffic lights and Mum was having a moan at me for something, so in a sulk I dropped down onto the floor behind her seat.
Seconds later a car hit us hard from behind. Had I remained in between the seats I'd have gone through the windscreen.

The next car we had was fitted with rear belts.

Last night, I tripped down the stairs, managed to twist slightly whilst falling, and put the side of my head through the 1930s glass front door. I'd have hit it face on otherwise, and it was the sort of glass that splintered.

Several years ago, my lovely neighbor noticed that I had a bald patch on my driver's side front tyre (shared drive, and I used to put DD in the car seat behind the passenger seat, and then walk around the back of the car to get to the driver's side. I never walked past the driver's tyre).

I got a new pair of tyres that same afternoon. Two days later, on a rare, Christmas shopping visit from my family, I was driving back in the dark on a small but busy A road, in the middle of the country. Two cars in front of me suddenly braked. The car in front of me hit the first car. I managed an emergency stop, with about a foot to spare. All I could think of was that if my neighbor hadn't told me about my tyre, there would have been no way I'd have stopped in time. I had my DM, my DSis and DD (15 months) in the car. We could have been wiped out. As it was, my DSis got out to help the older gentleman in the car in front, and I phoned for the police and ambulance, whilst DM cuddled DD.

Lastly, I had a troubled pregnancy with DS (10 months). At 26 weeks, during the first lockdown, I was rushed to hospital with a partial placental abruption, bleeding and with my waters having gone. DS was still happy, and despite more bleeds, I managed to hang on until 34 weeks. I had a big bleed at home that morning, managed to get into the Day Assessment Unit, and my consultant decided, in her words "enough's enough", the risks of carrying on the pregnancy was too great. I was induced that afternoon. As I was being induced, I was given a final 'presentation' scan, to check DS was still head down. It showed a catastrophic bleed hiding behind the placental, which if it had bled out at home, would likely have been fatal to both of us.

DS was born at 34w 1d, and despite needing 2 weeks in NICU, is a cheeky, happy crawling baby. I regularly have night terrors, where the consultant sent me home instead.

DH, two 'that would have been close' moments for the same incident, 7/7. He went to work an hour early that day to double check a presentation he was due to give. If he'd gone at his usual time he would have likely just gotten off at Kings Cross at the time of the explosion.

Coming home on the bus as a teen-ager, arrived at the bus station where I was getting off. The alighting point for our bus was occupied by another, so our driver pulled up behind and let a handful of us off alongside to the fence between the pedestrian area and the busway. All the passengers walk towards the back of the bus between bus and railings to nearest point where they can step into covered pedestrian way. I'm at the back.
Buses have a large overhang at the back so when the bus pivots on its rear wheels the back of the bus swings around that point in an arc.
You guessed it, the bus driver didn't check all his passengers were clear, and as I was making my way along the bus pulled away, turning sharply out to get round the bus in front. The rear of the turning bus, closed the gap between the railings and as it was driving away quickly, the gap I was in was vanishing fast. I dived head first over the railings and turned to see the space I was in, shrunk to mere millimetres. I watched as the bus rear team alongside the railings with barely clearance for a wafer (thin mint) for some way before finally opening back up as the bus turned onto the road and drove off. I would have been paste. If I'd thought about it even for a moment before leaping the fence I'd have been dead

I almost killed an elderly man. He stepped out to cross a road on a 40mph rural road as I was driving.

I somehow manage to stop and he fell in front of my car so I assumed I had killed him.

He was very British about it and said he's totally fine. A couple saw it happen and they helped me take him home and then walked past my car shortly after to find me crying hysterically and sat with me until I was ok to drive.

When I was 11 I swallowed a marble but it went down my windpipe slightly. I used my neck muscles and managed it bring it back up. Fills me with fear.

Again at 11, a friend and I were in a park on swings and a man watched us from the fence. Then he moved to the climbing frame and leant against that. Then closer still until he was leaning on the swing frame and started to try and talk to us. We ran off. No idea what type of person he may have been.

I was driving on the motorway and a car with bikes on the roof passed me in the middle lane. When it was about 20 feet in front of me, one of the bikes came loose and fell into the road. It basically landed on one of the tyres and bounced on the road in front of me bear in mind I was doing 65ish mph at this point and flew over the bonnet of my car and into the verge, missing my car by about 18 inches.

I was very comme ci comme ca about it at the time, but a few hours later I started shaking and feeling nauseous, and had nightmares about it for months afterwards.

I still can't watch any of those Final Destination films because I basically think I escaped death that day and at some point it's going to come for me. (Although they're hardly classics of cinema by all accounts so I don't think I'm missing much.)

Took my then 3 year old to the doctor on new years eve as he'd been ill all over Christmas. No temp, cold, kind of clammy and very lethargic. It was the second time we'd seen her as the first time was just a "bug" She was visibly pissed of with us explaining that we knew he wasn't right so very stroppily said if we still weren't happy to take him to the children's A&E. gave us a letter to give to them. In the taxi there he passed out, rushed into the reception to all hell breaking loose as they rushed away with him. He had pneumonia, was showing symptoms of septicaemia. When the emergency doctor finally saw us she was livid as the doctor had put in her letter that I was "overwrought and overly anxious, probably just needed reassurance.

@FightingTheFoo

Out of control Chinese rocket : www.theguardian.com/science/2021/may/06/chinese-rocket-falling-crash-to-earth-saturday-china-space-station-long-march-5b-us-space-command

I picked my son and nephew up from school, they were 6. They were running ahead of me along a footpath and I noticed the door thing on a lamppost had swung open and had such a sick premonition feeling that nephew was going to run into it. Before I could even should his name he tripped and landed with his head on the edge of the open door. Knocked himself out, was unconscious for 3 hours, needed 11 stitches on his wee face.
It was such a freak thing, if he'd fallen an inch in any other direction he would have missed it but he landed right on it. His parents were at a funeral 3 hours drive away so they had to come home and he was unconscious the whole time. He woke up just before they arrived.
I feel sick every time I think about that day and for a long time saw the potential for freak accidents everywhere. Still do but less so, even though the boys are teenagers now, nephew's scar has faded really well and he doesn't remember the accident at all (because of having been unconscious for 3 hours no doubt)
I don't worry about the big stuff so much but majorly over- react to small silly dangers still. Dh reckons I need some therapy, he might be right. Nephew's parents laugh about my over-cautiousness, they didn't see the worst of it.