To ask whether any seemingly innocuous decisions you have made may actually have saved your life or prevented injury

[Cheeseandlobster]

I once set my alarm wrong. I don't know why or how. But it went off 27 minutes after it should have done. I used to go running on the same route but when I got there the road was sealed off halfway by police. A car had pulled out on a bike and I could see debris strewn all over the road and pavement where I would have been and I am convinced I would have been caught up in it had I have set my alarm for the correct time.

Have any of you made an innocent decision or mistake that may have changed everything like this?

I was ten minutes late leaving for work on the day of the 7/7 bombings. My local tube station was Aldgate and I would have definitely been caught up in it all if I had been on time.

@makingmammaries

Not exactly, but it was my ex’s laziness and bad temper that stopped us being on the viewing platform of the World Trade Center first thing on 9/11. We wouldn’t have stood a chance if we had been up there.

Bloody hell.

I was driving on the motorway in France, it was my company car and the company had agreed to add my sister to the insurance because of driving abroad. I had never driven on the right before, it was getting dark and the lights on the wrong side were disorienting me. I asked to swap driving with my sister, who was experienced at driving on the continent. We stopped, changed places and set off again. Perhaps 5 minutes. 2 miles down the road we passed an accident that had happened within the last few minutes.

The same sister, a few years earlier, was at the Conservative conference in Brighton. She'd had a bit to drink and decided to go for a walk on the beach. She had been out of the hotel no more than 2 minutes when she heard the bomb go off behind her.

@newtb

There was a TV programme with an accident investigator who, with examples, showed that beyond a certain point many incidents weren't accidents but foregone conclusions.

In every case he went through the time line and explained it. Fascinating programme.

That sounds fascinating. I wonder if its available on youtube or something.

My first car wasn't the most reliable, and it just cut out and refused to do anything on a lonely A Road at dusk. I had just enough momentum to get it off the carriage way onto the verge, and then a long walk to fine a phone. (pre- mobile phone). I rang the AA walked back to the car, which now smelt stangely of petrol, but by that time I didn't have the light to see much, my torch being small.
The AA man discovered that the there was a crack leaking petrol right above to a wire. About 1/2 cm. Enough for a tilt in the road to add a spark to a narrow drizzle of petrol falling through the air had I even been tilted slightly, which I would have been round the next bend. This wasn't the reason for the sudden stoppage though, because it started perfectly for the AA man.
The AA man said eventually that he might put it down to "divine intervention via intermittent electrical fault" and I wasn't going to argue.

I was meant to get the train into London in the day of the tube bombings.

Let someone out ahead of me at a junction when I was driving home with my 3 kid.

I drove around the bend and the car had be absolutely totally by a lorry

Like a few others here, I missed a tube at Whitechapel the day of the 7/7 bombings - doors were closing as I got to the platform. The next tube arrived, we got on, the lines went dead & it waited on the platform. Aldgate is the next station up. Station was evacuated but we had no idea why and as I walked back to my flat ambulances started racing up the Whitechapel Road. Someone at my workplace lost their life that day, really brought it home.

But morbid, but I enjoy reading threads like this..

Bit*

I also should have been on the circle line on 7/7 right at the time of the attack, I was on my way home from uni to celebrate my 21st, the night before I thought I really can’t be arsed lugging a suitcase on the tube in rush hour so I got an overnight coach from Victoria instead, my mum really bollocked me at the time for wasting money as I’d already booked my train tickets Before I changed my mind. Im so pleased I ignored her, She still shudders at the thought

Yanbu to ask. It's Chat really isn't it?

I was almost kidnapped. My friend and I were going to meet these 2 'boys' we met on MySpace (no parental supervision and didn't know any better, it was years ago) but when we got there it was men. They tried to get us into a van and we ran and ran. They ran after us, my friend wanted us to crouch behind some bins and i was going to go in behind her but at the last second I grabbed her and flagged a random car that was passing. Car was a taxi and we jumped straight into the back and were shouting to drive. The poor taxi driver drove us home having gotten an awful fright. God knows what would have happened if we had badly hidden behind that bin.

Not so much making active decisions (bar leaving abusive ex) but I have had so many events that seemingly should have killed/injured me that the family say I’ve more lives than a black cat.

A dear friend believes in guardian angels, my Granny used to say ‘It’s hard to kill a bad thing’ - so I’m either blessed with a hard-working angel or the devil is taking care of his own 😂😂😂

I went out into the front garden, and picked up some plants to put in the far flower bed. Then I decided to work on the flower bed next to the door instead. A couple of minutes later, a drunk driver crashed into my garden, and landed his car on top of the far flower bed. I'd have been under it.

Many years ago, we were due to be going on a family holiday abroad. My dad changed the booking at the last minute. We would have been on the Herald of Free Enterprise.

I was due to be on the PanAm flight that blew up over Lockerbie but I woke up that morning with a terrible fever and earache. The ear was infected and the doctor told me I couldn't fly. I had to tell my sister I couldn't get to NYC for Xmas and was crying down the phone.

I was very much eager to go and watch the Shoreham Air Show in August 2015, with my parents, DH and 2 DS.

I had in mind we could park on the side of the A27, near the bottom of the viaduct, just before entering Lancing. Perfect watch spot, I thought.

Somehow it didn't happen. The kids were too restless, we got too tired...

Later that day I hear about this: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Shoreham_Airshow_crash

Had the kids not been a pain in arse that day, we would had been standing on the exact spot where the crash happened (some of the victims were apparently watching the show from there, just as I had planned)

A couple of years ago I, my dh and our 1 year old dc went to a pub we were trying out as were looking to move to that area. We headed to the pub garden, and we initially sat at some seats near to the building.

I decided to move further down the garden, as my dc kept trying to drink water out of the pub dog bowl. As we moved seats I remember thinking to myself; ´Imagine if I’ve somehow had an instinct that something bad is going to happen, and that’s the real reason I wanted to move!’ Not sure if it was just a passing thought or a premonition. Probably the former!

Later on I headed up the steps to the bar. About a minute after I‘d got back to our table the entire upstairs window fell out. Huge shards of glass ( some about a foot long ) fell into the pub garden right onto the steps, and where we’d originally been sitting.

@makingmammaries my cousin stopped to wait for his friend who'd left his bag at the hotel the morning of 9/11. They had been up to the top of the World Trade Centre the night before but the weather was so poor they'd been asked to leave and given complimentary tickets for the next day. That few minutes wait whilst his mate went back for his bag...

On the way back from my dads house, walking with my baby in the pram, I usually walk on my dads side of the road but for some reason I decided to cross the road and walk on the grass verge instead. never ever do that.

A car came screeching down the road and I remember thinking 'imagine if he crashes' and right where I Would have been had I not crossed. he smashed into the pavement and I swear me and my baby would have been killed.
no idea why I crossed the road minutes before.

My dad was driving home when the kegworth air disaster happened and missed it by moments

Not a decision so much as circumstance, my parents went on holiday a few years ago. There was maybe 20 buses going from the airport to various hotels from their tour operator. Driving down a thin, windy road and they pass two of the busses which have been involved in accident and fallen over the edge of the road. Lots of people died. If they had been assigned a different number bus or picked a different hotel it could have been them.

Not quite the same thing but an odd story. My mother told me when we were little (she had 3 young kids) she was busy making us tea and was under the usual tea time stress with small hungry and tired children, but she said she felt a sudden urge that she had to go outside and look over the hedge in the garden. She said she remembers feeling a bit cross at the time, thinking, “oh for gods sake I’ve got tea on the stove and the children are whining and I’ve got to go and look in the garden, I never get a minutes peace”. She said she went outside, almost on autopilot and looked over the hedge and her neighbour had fallen, injured himself and needed an ambulance.

I used to work in Leeds and would drive in on a morning. Occasionally my mum would have a lift with me and then go shopping around the city.

One morning when she'd asked for a lift she was running late, so told me to get off to work, and that she would go shopping the next day.

I got no further than a roundabout about a mile from home. All clear to my right so I drove onto it, only to be completely sidewinded by an HGV on my left. His cab went right over the top of my car, slicing it in half, and completely crushing the passenger side. I shudder to think what would have happened to mum had she not been running late and had that lift.

As for me, I had a lot of bruising and whiplash, but I walked out of that wreck and remember completely bollocking the hgv driver for spoiling the paint work on the car's front wing!

Travelled to uni a day early on a whim and avoided travelling through Circle Line on 7/7