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.

So sorry to hear this OP! Hope you manage to process it soon and feel back to normal.

my own experience is minor compared to what others have shared, but I still find it shocking that this happened, a decade later! I was at a large pedestrian crossing in a very touristy part of London where traffic generally goes slowly. Several of us waiting to cross. I saw the pedestrian light go green so automatically stepped out into the road (admittedly didn’t check for traffic but this was such a large crossing next to loads of museums, middle of the day in summer). I felt a double decker bus literally brush past me - it had skipped the red light completely and just ploughed very fast across the crossing. It missed killing me by probably millimetres given that I actually felt it touch me as it passed. Very much wish I’d got the license plate. I remember a lady at the crossing screaming as it happened but of course I brushed it off and was embarrassed.

There is probably cameras recording the incident.

I was driving with my daughter in the car along an unlit stretch of dual carriageway (A40 near Newport) one night. There was very little traffic on the road and I was doing a steady 60.

All of a sudden, lights came up really quickly behind me and I thought the car was going to hit me from behind. At the last minute, he must have noticed me and swerved into the outside lane, hit the central reservation and carried on spinning until he came to a stop across the carriageway. He immediately got out of the car and ran off.

I managed to slow down and stop without hitting him and someone else coming from behind who witnessed what happened called the police.

I'm sorry about your traumatic experience - playing tetris is supposed to help prevent Post traumatic stress disorder so you might want to play some of that over the coming days to help you process it

It's very understandable. My dearest woman friend died recently on the road. Two men racing their BMWs, one caught her car and rolled it. OH really hates me driving now, whether alone or together. (He doesn't drive.). Irrational or not doesn't change how you feel. I'm sorry this happened to you.

This was my fault. I was just stepping into the road, and my friend yanked me back. A bus was about to hit me. My only defence was that I had recently finished chemo, and my mind was probably not as sharp as it should have been. It took me a while to get over that OP.

Unfortunately dangerous drivers also hit other drivers - like the moron bombing who nearly hit me a few hours ago. There was a very very large puddle across the road, and he was trying to avoid it - which meant he was driving at speed on my side of the road straight at me. Fortunately there was a lay by right there, and I was able to pull in out of his way. Otherwise it would have been a head on collision.

I was on a mobility scooter and was waiting for the green man.When it indicated for me to cross i started to do so only for some dumb sod to drive right through the lights right in front of me as i was crossing .Some people really have no sense

was it a zebra crossing OP?

It does really shake you up. I had a car accident a few years back, I entered a roundabout and a car came from absolutely no where, police believe he was doing around 90 on a normal road. He must have seen me at the last minute and swerved and crushed the bonnet of my car. Had he not swerved he would have gone into the drivers side i would definitely have been dead. We rushed to check he was ok, thinking he must be dead. Somehow he had done a runner, the police said the car smelled of alcohol. I was so angry that this person could have killed me becuase he was driving so stupidly under the influence.

I am so pleased you are ok, but give yourself plenty of loving for next few days to ensure you are ok.

Also please report it to the police. Wherever you are this may be the evidence someone else is hoping another person brings forward & stops the perpetrator doing it again.

had a proper nasty shock a few years back with 80 mph impact head on car crash that just came totally out of the blue , was nt ready for that one lucky to walk away from but the PTSD afterwards was hell to live with took a long time and some very long nights going over and over it , but i m still here thank god and still driving !

at 37 weeks pregnant I was crossing a pedestrian crossing with a family with small child in a pushchair. A driver then looking at her phone didn’t see us crossing and hit me lightly I had my arms on the bonnet. Was really scary the dad of the child and other drivers had a go at her. I hope it taught her a lesson not to use her phone when driving. I had an adrenaline dump and was shuck up after. Thinking what would have happened if she’d hit me at faster speed.

When I was in London it seemed the norm at light cotroled croosings when the light changed to amber the traffic raced off regarless who was and were they were on the crossing. Predestrians run for your life!

How awful! that must have been so scary for you.

A few months ago I was walking with my mum when we were nearly run over on a zebra crossing. I don't even think the guy saw us despite it being broad daylight. He was too busy messing with the bag of food on his lap from the nearby McDonald's.

My suggestion might be that we need to bring back the County Asylums for the Criminally Insane

It has happened to me when cycling to work. When I was on a roundabout a driver waiting to join moved onto it when I was directly in front of him, catching my back wheel and throwing me through the air. Was airlifted to hospital, put in an induced coma and had an emergency craniotomy. They initially couldn't bring me round from the coma and it got to the stage that, due to the nature of the brain damage, they called in the family for a meeting and said they would switch the life support off if I didn't come round over the weekend. Shortly after I showed signs of consciousness and eventually came round. A month later I had to have a cranioplasty to repair the hole in my skull. I have been very lucky in that the brain damage hasn't been debilitating or affected my everyday activities, nor did I suffer trauma. The driver pleaded guilty to careless driving and got a fine and six points, I got a large compensation payout. I still use a bicycle for local transport and have come close to being hit at roundabouts a few times in recent years.

I know what you're going through. Many years ago on holiday my then boyfriend and I were driving and came round a bend to find a car speeding towards us on our side of the road. We executed an emergency stop and the car missed us by inches, literally inches away from a high speed head on smash. We managed to get back to the campsite then we just lay in the tent just holding each other and shaking for a long time.

Gosh this must have been absolutely terrifying and it make take you a while to process it and feel ok with what happened. Talk about it as much as you need to but try not to let it overwhelm everything else. Keep telling yourself, you are ok and nothing bad ultimately happened.

Sorry this happened to you. That's what's commonly known as the door zone and cyclists are encouraged to ride outside of it. Obviously car drivers then get arsey about you cycling defensively, but those kind of drivers would run you over if you didn't as they are unable to see past their own bonnet and observe any hazards in front of them.

If you ride a bike on the road this kind of life-threatening incident tends to happen about once a ride or something. I'm not making light of what happened happened but want to impress upon the drivers here how that feels.

Sorry you had this experience BUT you said you were in the middle lane. You should have been in the inside lane unless you were overtaking. Far too many people hog the middle lane, leaving the inside lane free. This effectively reduces the motorway by one lane.
And people wonder why motorways get snarled up!

I was once riding my horse on a lane, and could hear a car bombing down the lane- I stopped near a driveway, just as said car came around the (blind) corner, braked when she saw me then skidded straight by where I would have been.

My first thought was 'you nearly killed my horse!'. My second was 'how the fuck can you drive like that with a baby in your car!' (Which I let rip at her for when she got out to apologise, I actually made her cry but hopefully she'll drive more responsibly with her child in the car).

It wasn't until I got back to the yard that I reasoned I probably would have died, too.

This happened to me so often when I was training for races that I ended up carrying a spiky metal "claw" (used for shredding meat) and would scratch up their paint when drivers would deliberately try to hit me or scare me.

I would not recommend this in general, as people have a tendency to get very angry, but I am a naturally confrontational person and would lose sleep playing these near- misses over and over in my head. I reasoned that, if police aren't going to do anything when lunatics in vehicles are threatening the lives of pedestrians, they're surely not going to do anything if I cause property damage when defending myself.

So sorry OP and all the others on here who have been affected by reckless drivers. I was clipped on the side of the head by a bus as a teenager while slowly walking along the pavement - it all happened so fast I don’t know if I was too close to the edge of the pavement or not. I just remember coming to with a crowd of people gathered round me waiting for the ambulance to arrive. I was in shock for a good few months afterwards.

I’m guilty of trying to summarise to briefly what happened. I had moved in to said middle lane to overtake the HGVs in the inside lane.