I nearly walked in front of a bus

[Speakandspell]

I was walking into town for a night out with friends last week. Came to a road that’s got bus lanes and was about to walk out without looking but did check at final moment and there was a bus right there - I came within a second of walking in front of it and it would have probably killed me.

I can’t stop thinking about it- how bloody stupid I was - I just wasn’t paying attention and it’s really frightened me.

Obviously it’s given me such a fright that I will be much more careful in future but I can’t stop running what could have been in my head and feeling sick about it.

How do I get past this? Anyone had this happen before. I feel so freaked out by it.

It is extraordinary how many tourists cross busy roads with many different types of vehicles and cyclists, and the tourists cross when the man is red and have near misses.

HRTFT but coming close to dying can be traumatising. Keep an eye on things.

It’s very normal to have flashbacks and other signs of a post trauma response just after something like this. Look after your body extra well and in a couple of months if it hasn’t settled down or is impacting your life then see your GP - EMDR is really effective.

This will sound bonkers but something you can do right now is play Tetris. I know it sounds daft but there is a bit of evidence that playing it shortly after a traumatic event helps prevent intrusive visual memories. Not much evidence - but it certainly won’t do you any harm!

It definitely shakes you up.
I did something similar in the summer with a tram. I was crossing at the tram stop as it came along the opposite track. It ALWAYS stops at the platform so I just assumed I was safe & crossed in front of it. Except this time it didn't stop & I very nearly got hit. Loads of people saw & there was a fair bit of head shaking, exclaiming & talk of how silly I'd been (I had really) I was all dressed up for a night out which made it worse somehow.
I won't make that mistake again & I think that's the best way to look at it.

Yes, once. The crossings had changed in my city due to a tram construction and I was just on autopilot. The bus braked and someone pulled me back. It's a crossing I take reasonably often so yes I do think about it every time. It shakes you up.

I’ve done this loads of times recently with electric cars. They’re so quiet and creep up on you. Scares me every time and get that horrible feeling in my stomach

I’ve done this in London. I didn’t know at the time but I was coming down with flu and was getting woozy. The driver was very very quick on the brake, otherwise I’d have been hit.
I think about it sometimes but I can’t bring myself to overthink it. Those circumstances are so unlikely to happen again, and at the time I have the best apology to the driver that I possibly could. He and the passengers probably thought I was drunk.

You do see this happen a lot in London because so many tourists are looking in the wrong direction for traffic. DH saw one really horrible incident when a man stepped out and people couldn’t stop him in time.

OP, what you describe happened this year to my SIL. She has life-changing injuries.

She was unlucky. You weren’t. And that’s all there is to it, but unfortunately your lizard brain has kicked your self preservation instinct into high gear, which can leave you feeling really jittery.

I was once in a car accident that could have killed my children. It took a very long time before I could drive comfortably again without every nerve in my body jangling - it was like a muscle memory every time I got in the car, my unconscious mind saying ‘careful now, being in here is dangerous, something bad could happen’.

As someone upthread said, we all make hundreds of micro decisions every day, often barely consciously, and any one of them could have a serious outcome. That fact is suddenly very front of mind for you because you’ve suffered a shock, but if you try not to dwell on it those feelings will start to recede - just give yourself a bit of time.

So what you do now is process what happened with its good outcome — you’re still here. Sit calmly,tell yourself you’re safe, see in your mind’s eye what happened as if you’re watching from above. Stop where you are safe, not hit by the bus, see the scene as you are safe and walking away. You can do this once or several times. Your brain will process that you are unhurt, you’ve learnt from the experience. If you ever start to think what if, what could have happened you replay what did and tell yourself each time you are safe and unhurt.

I’m sure this has happened a few times in my past and I’m just more careful afterwards.

One really bad place for this was locally to me where I worked in my first 2 jobs after leaving school, it was quite divisive and I think a bus driver’s wife either ended her life this way or was knocked down by a bus there, it affected so many people that the bus companies and local council rerouted the buses there (very busy area). That really shook me up though.

I never forget the time when I had my first born as a toddler in a buggy.
I had started walking across a pelican crossing. I couldn't see what was behind the lorry that had stopped for us (the crossing was just after a bend).
We very nearly got hit by an emergency ambulance. It was so close, and I still have flashbacks.

This!
I was really deep in thought walking home from town the other day. Suddenly realised I'd crossed a main road without thinking about it and was on the other side of the road with no recollection of crossing it. I must have been completely on autopilot.

A bus driver saved me years ago (another near miss) when I was about to step off but he saw a cyclist flying down the inside between the bus and the pavement. Grabbed the back of my jacket and pulled me back into the bus.

I actually was hit by a bus as a teenager - luckily, it was going pretty slowly and I had some scratches and was badly bruised but nothing worse. I honestly think it was worse for the driver (who kept offering to drive me to hospital, which would have meant kidnapping the other passengers as it was very much the wrong way!) and then for my mum, who opened the door to me tearful, covered in mud, with blood across my face and saying I'd been hit by a bus. But I do still think about it sometimes, twenty years on - in particular, I remember being on the ground, looking at the massive wheel inches from my head. Those 'by the grace of God' moments stick with you, but as others have said you have to try and reframe it as appreciating your luck and a warning to be careful in future.

Me too. I never realised how much I used my ears when walking around until we had near silent cars!

I live in a historic town with a lot of narrow little streets that hardly get any traffic, and am used to just strolling along them. Some of them haven't even got pavements. It's such a shock to suddenly hear someone sound their horn behind you when you didn't hear them coming.

I slipped but recovered myself on a live volcano. If I had fully lost my balance I would have fallen into the lava. I have never stopped thinking about it and it was 15 years ago.

I remember going for a walk around Gardens we hadn't been to before, one of my children ran really close to a low stone wall and stopped just at the wall. When i got over I realised it was a huge drop onto concrete and had he kept running he could have easily went over the edge and would have died. This ruined my mental health for months as every night I kept getting intrusive thoughts of him going over 😳

In my exerperience I just had to think the thoughts and accept that I was having them for a reason, and the reason was to be sooooo bloody careful with things like that in the future. But the what ifs are HORRIBLE. Learn from it and just be thankful xx

We all switch off from time to time. The mind wanders, especially when you are doing everyday things. Be thankful you are OK and take care. 🌞

They make a noise but it’s a higher tone than an engine. Our friends sounds like a choir starting. Hopefully we will all adjust
over time. I think they should be fitted with an extra ‘a-hem’ type noise horn so you can warn people you are there without scaring the life out of them with horn.

Yep, pulled out of a junction into the path of a lorry a few months ago (my fault, I couldn't see well and was panicking). Had my toddler and my mum in the car too, fraction of a section later we'd have been hit on their side of the car. Felt sick for ages after.

Few days ago a woman with a child in a pushchair walked across the road as I was driving and got close, she didn't look once in either direction. It seems to happen all the time where I live so I always assume people are going to step into the road without looking

I pulled someone back via their ponytail just as they were stepping out in front of a bus, too, once. Scared us both.

You were lucky. Everyone has had a lapse of attention from time to time. Be grateful you got pulled back and focus on paying attention especially hard for a while. x

I gave myself a massive fright a few weeks ago after nearly stepping in front of a bus.

Our town centre lay out has recently changed and a road that has always been a one way street has now become a two way street for buses and taxis.

I was on auto pilot - years and years of only having to check one way for traffic I guess.

I just got a feeling and stopped, a split second before a bus whooshed past.

TBH, I’m not the only one who has struggled with it - there’s been a couple of accidents already and there’s lots of chat about it in the local community groups on Facebook. Maybe it needs to be made a bit more obvious - paint the new bus lane green or something - and bus drivers be a bit more vigilant while we all get used to it.

Awful!

I nearly got hit by a cyclist speeding down a hill extremely fast when I was heavily pregnant. The traffic lights were just about to turn green for me and I didn't look before stepping onto the road and whoosh - the cyclist flashed just past me at a huge speed. I felt sick at the thought of what might have happened a long time afterwards. My beautiful DD is now 15.

You've had a shock, and the dwelling on it is the brain's way of processing that shock/trauma. It'll pass in time. What you need to focus on is that you WEREN'T hit. Your caveman brain did exactly what it was designed to do, and made you look again at just the right moment.

I once "saved" my older sister from getting hit by a bus when we were in our early 20s, out shopping on a Saturday afternoon. I just grabbed her coat and yanked her back. It was no big deal to me, I personally hadn't thought she was "that" close. But she still mentions it occasionally, a good 15+ years later, so it must have rattled her quite badly.

I went to a friends house after school (age 11) and her mum pulled me back as a bus flew past my nose. I can still remember the warm air lifting up my hair.

I walk to/from work when the weather's nice and I have learned the hard way that I must double-check before crossing on the green man, because inevitably some car or van will drive through the red light and nearly hit me.

The other week I was so frustrated, I banged on the guy's back window as he zoomed past. Then he pulled over and stopped! Thankfully there were two men walking very close to me, so I assume that's why the driver didn't get out to confront me.

I've become adept at looking for company names on the sides of vans so I can phone or email the office as soon as possible afterwards and ask them to check the dashcam for bad driving. Still shaky from the time a pharmacy van drove through a red light and it's only because I was turning my head to check that I didn't get hit. Thankfully the company took my complaint seriously and followed up.

In very bad cases, I take notes on my phone immediately afterwards - time, date, registration plate, situation. In most cases it's of no practical use; the police aren't going to do anything for a near miss. But I've had one van nearly hit me and then almost hit a car by making the same illegal move, and I dream of one day seeing her pulled over and being able to jeer at her (from a safe distance). I suppose it makes me feel a little more in control.

So my hard-earned advice for "getting past it" would be:

Remind yourself that you're safe now and that everyone makes dumb mistakes sometimes.
Commit to being more aware of your surroundings. I rarely listen to music or audiobooks now, and if I take out my phone I make myself stop and do whatever I'm doing and then return it to my pocket, rather than wandering whilst looking at it. The only other time I'll take it out is at a bad intersection so I can have the video ready to go.
Train yourself to look in all directions. I regularly visit the USA and am terrified of being on auto-pilot when I cross the road. And yes, those electric cars can be scarily quiet!