Someone just very nearly killed me.

[EnchantedAutumn]

I haven't had such an experience before, and feel quite shaken.

We were out walking early this afternoon along the canal side. At a road bridge we stood at the crossing and waited for the traffic to stop to allow us to pass.

Half way over the crossing a vehicle sped up from the other side and missed me by about an inch. We were extremely visible and there were no large vehicles blocking the driver's view. Very few cars about actually.

This was so quick and it was almost speeding, so extremely shocking. Other drivers stopped and asked me was I ok, whilst DH spun around like a drama queen very very angry, whilst I tried to catch the registration - sadly could not get it all.
Dh was so upset, although I felt a little numb. I saw it as a very lucky thing to still be alive, but also angry that someone could change or end my life so brutally and easily in a fraction of a second.
I choose to presume that the driver was distracted, rather than happy to slaughter me, but it still feels so shocking.

Has this ever happened to anyone else? It was so, so close it has really knocked me. I doubt I would have survived had it hit me.
A sudden shock like this is probably common, and yet the idea of my life changing suddenly due to disease or accident feels easier to bear than someone just casually mowing me over.

If something similar has happened to you, how did you process it? I feel much better a few hours later, but still really weird.

It is worth mentioning, remain careful. Both whilst driving and walking.

How scary OP. Take time to process it. It’s awful to think you could have been killed, just like that.

I was involved in a car accident in which the other driver was doing 120mph and lost control of his car. I didn’t really realise the effect it had on me mentally until quite some time afterwards.

There's a pedestrian crossing near where I used to work which was notorious for people going through it on red. Genuinely no idea why. Nothing to hinder people's views.

At all times I didn't cross until both sides had stopped which served me well because drivers drove through. One time a motorcycle not only went through but went through really close to me on the pavement. I had a fleeting thought of pushing them off their bike to serve them right. Fortunately I didn't go through with the mad thought but I do get really really cross when people go through red lights.

Another one in a nearby town often has cyclists going through on red and I regularly shout at them. For all the good it does me.

There should be cameras at all such locations, to catch the bastards. If they can have speed cameras everywhere, they should certainly have them at pedestrian crossings.

This happened to my dc on a zebra crossing. I was just behind with my friend’s children (was walking a heap of them to school that day) dd crossed just ahead of me. I think the driver saw me but not smaller dd and thought they’d floor it and get across ahead of me. It was SO close. All I could do was scream stop and luckily dd was listening. I had too many children with me to talk to the driver (who stopped just after the crossing obviously also having just had a massive fright) - I just concentrated on making sure all the dc were ok as they were all quite frightened by it.

It was years ago and I still wake up in the night thinking about it sometimes. I hope the driver does too and learnt an important lesson that day.

On the plus side, my dc learnt to be super cautious on crossings and have very good awareness as a result.

I had a near miss when a truck, driver clearly lost, drove the wrong way down a one way and crossed the pedestrian crossing I was crossing (light was green for me).
I still recall the look of frozen shock on his face and I just moved, body had sprinted out of the way before my mind registered.

Weirdly I sort of emotionally blanked it and it doesn't really hold emotional resonance for me. What does though is the absolute, repeated carnage I witnessed growing up in a developing country, with poor driving standards and a massive drink driving problem, and the deaths of so many people I knew. I'm better now although still a jumpy passanger, but I saw the Kronenburg film Crash in my late teens and I didn't know the word "triggered" then but I felt really distressed and panicky for hours afterwards.

Unfortunately it remains a society that expresses its trauma in anger and recklessness, and huge bravado, so it's no safer now.

On a happier note, I was in Munich recently and was so impressed at the driver courtesy towards pedestrians. The rules feel far more in the pedestrian's favour there.

Glad you're safe, OP.

I had an experience while working for a local After School Club that still sticks in my mind to this day. We were doing the daily school run, which involves a five minute walk down some relatively quiet side streets, before crossing a slightly busier road in order to get to the club itself.

Now this road stretches on for quite a length, and there's a clear line of sight for any cars who are travelling down it. Ample time for us to see if any cars are getting too close, and equally ample time for any drivers to see a line of children crossing and slow down accordingly.

Our line leader that day strode out a few steps into the road in order to check for any incoming traffic. She noticed that a single car had only just turned onto our road, and was still a good distance away from our crossing point. Plenty of time to cross safely, we thought, as she waved to the driver and turned to the rest of us encourage us to start walking.

To our collective horror, the car then sped up and barrelled down the road, almost knocking her over. She still had enough time to jump back onto the pavement, thankfully, but we were all shocked at what had just happened.

I still wonder what was going through that driver's head.

Hope you’re feeling better today OP.
What you said about hiking struck me too. We do the same - we are walking in Wales and go by train - and the quiet away from roads is incredible. Despite living in a suburban town, we find when we come back from a walking trip that « re-entry » is really jarring. Everything is so loud, vehicles are big and scary, and the speeds seem incredible. I e lived in towns all my life, and after a day or so that feeling goes away, but we’ve noted the shift in perspective which all of a sudden makes motorised vehicles extremely alien.

I don’t know what the answer is - more people centred planning and traffic free areas like in Europe I suppose.

I'm sorry to read of your horrible experience and others; some even worse. Mine was relatively minor. Wan£er taking a corner fast, the wrong way down a one way Lane in Covent Garden; yes, it's an actual lane. He clipped me - DH went after him chucking anything he could find at him! This was just after the police station at Bow Street had been shut. Reported etc but never got asked for a witness statement or as a victim of assault; I'm sure he got a few points or even more, if he hit another car.

I had a car spin in front of me on the M4 one rush hour on the way to work. Thankfully, my work had already sent me on a defensive driving course, and I had watched the way the right lane was starting to bunch and eased off the accelerator already. When the other car spun, he stopped a matter of inches in front of me, facing towards me, looked me dead in the eye, reversed back, three point turn and drove on. Watching all the other vehicles coming at speed behind me, expecting them to hit me was absolutely terrifying. If I hadn't already taken my foot off and started to slow, I would have hit the other car at 70mph, there would have been a massive pile up and lots of dead/injured people. I got off at the next junction, and went home instead of to work.

It's not the speed though, it's actually looking where you are going, stopping for pedestrians at zebra crossings and side roads etc as well as not parking on pavements and forcing them onto busy roads.

20 limits are bad for air pollution as well - there are more emissions at that speed.

30 is fine as long as you actually pay attention to what you are doing.

Traffic free areas are fine as long as they are genuinely traffic free but too often there are exceptions and you get delivery vans, blue badge holders etc. There may be no reasonable alternative to that but if cars use pedestrian zones they should be doing no more than 5mph.

You get told off if you cross a road on a red man even if it's completely empty though. I think there's a happy medium - use the crossing if you can but if the road is empty it's fine to cross.

I am also not keen on their flashing amber light which allows cars to go even though pedestrians have a green man.

I think that is rather the point. Average humans driving cars simply do not consistently pay attention.

We live on a fairly busy rural b road, 40mph limit but the only straight bit of the road for miles. So lots of speeding and overtaking. Popular area for families and walkers. We count the accidents. Only 6 in 2024, 2 requiring air ambulance, 3 involving children, and 1 was a multi car incident when 2 cars at the same time decided to overtake, hit each other and the cars they were overtaking, mounted the pavement clipping pedestrians including kids. I haven't included in the count the incident a couple of months ago when a car for no apparent reason mounted the pavement and drove down it before getting back on the road, I was chatting to my neighbour who was luckily facing the right way to see it oncoming and pulled us both into the hedge to avoid being hit. The car, a small pale blue fiat 500, didn't stop.
The debris that remains annoys me, it doesn't seem to be anyone's responsibility to clear up car parts after accidents. A stupid thing to stress about but I think it's because I'm a bit numbed to the human aspect. I've only lived here for a few years and I love it, the traffic is the only downside.
I'm tempted to start collecting the debris for an art installation.

This thread is making me think that we need a #MeToo campaign for near-misses and non-fatal strikes of vehicles against pedestrians!

Mine was being 'run under' by a car whilst I was on a bike - I'd stopped in the box for bikes at the front at traffic lights, which were red, but a car drove up from behind me and did not wish to stop, so hit me (I went over the bonnet but fell off to one side) and straight on accelerating on red through the junction and away. I didn't get any details as I was more concerned with untangling myself from the bike and getting clear of the next car coming, but it turned out I'd knocked one of the car hubcaps off with my ankle. Sadly the police did not want it as evidence and I was not allowed to take it in the ambulance as a souvenir....

We were in another country where it is normal for pedestrian crossings at junctions to turn green at the same time as the traffic light for the right turn into the street does. The theory is that the cars will turn right and then stop if there are pedestrians on the crossing. On one occasion, we started to cross and a car came speeding round the corner and nearly took out our son, who must have been about six at the time.

If I hadn't had unusually ninja-like reactions and yanked him out of the way, he would have been dead. It makes me shudder to even think about it.

Several years ago I was driving my daughter in my little Ford Fiesta on a dual carriageway which only has chevron marks to separate the traffic coming from the other direction.

Suddenly a 4×4 pulled out from the other side, crossed the chevrons, crossed the outside lane and drove straight towards me. I saw the driver - it was a woman, screaming.

It all only lasted a couple of seconds - she pulled away at the last minute, went back to her side of the road and drive off. I could see she had kids in the back.

I had stopped and the van next to me stopped. The driver and I exchanged horrified looks but there was nothing to do but just drive on.

I remember that incident every time I drive on that stretch and my daughter often talks about it.

I reckon the woman lost her temper with the kids and did it as a huge drama. I guess she never expected to actually crash. If she hadn't pulled back we would have been killed. Tbh we could have been killed anyway if I had done anything to avoid her but I just froze.

Sorry this happened to you. It was probably all about the driver and not you. These people may be having mental health crises but they certainly don't think about other people.

This is a terrible thing to have happened and I’m sorry.
Don’t be surprised if this takes a while to get over. You were obviously traumatised by it.

I was in central London to attend a conference. I was running late and the taxi dropped me opposite the venue. I considered running over the road, but it was busy so I walked up to the nearest crossing and waited for the green man. As I was halfway over the road, from nowhere a police car on blues and twos screamed around the corner. By instinct I jumped backwards and it missed me by a whisker.
I work in emergency services and could not believe that an officer driving an emergency vehicle could possibly drive like that. I wish I’d been able to take their number but was so shaken!

I caught two very similar incidents to yours on my Dash cam, about a year apart. Both drivers were prosecuted as a result of the footage. So it's well worth asking on local social media sites if anyone caught the moment on camera. I really hope that you can get over this as soon as possible. It's horrid. Bless you 🙏

I'm a cyclist & horse rider & have an incident like this about once a week - it's terrifying.

I've now got a helmet cam so can report any incidents.

If it reassures you, it is never as bad as it feels at the time. I have felt that I was a split second or millimeters from death but playing back the camera footage it is never as bad as it felt at the time.

The standard of driving generally is dreadful. I have been a driver for a while but never witnessed the sort of carelessness and sheer recklessness that is out there now. There are hardly any traffic police now so some people just seem to do what they want with little care or thought for other road users.

I have had similar experiences twice in my life.

Many years ago I was standing on the sidewalk in front of my house talking with some friends who were getting ready to leave. The lady was already in the car, the guy was talking to my then husband and was about to go around to get in the car. Suddenly here comes a car with a guy passed out behind the wheel. Miraculously, no one was injured. He went behind us, hitting our pickup and pushing it into the porch. My then husband jumped onto the hood of the car. The person standing next to me had paint from the car on the sunglasses in his back pocket. I felt the wind from the car on my back. It was one of the scariest things I’ve experienced.

Long before that, I parked and got out of my car. I turned around to cross the street. Before I could look for traffic, some idiot was about 2” from me. I hit the car with my hands and he screeched to a stop. That was pretty terrifying.

I haven't been nearly killed before, but I work as a bouncer on weekends and after a shift at a club one night, I was jumped from behind. Thankfully there were taxi drivers parked up and some knew me from working in town, they jumped out of their cabs and pulled the guy off me. It was someone we had earlier ejected from the club. Terrifying experience as was yours. That was 15 years ago and I still remember it, forever grateful to the taxi drivers.