Following on from the motorways thread and stories of people *almost* being involved, what is your closest dice with death?

Mine…

Dad book a holiday to Corfu (our first ever holiday abroad) but mum couldn’t get the time off work so he cancelled it and booked on the *same flight* a week later.

The flight.. British Airtours Flight 28M

when I was a kid, on my bike, turning right onto a main road, queue of cars on the main road waiting to turn right into my side rd so a quick glance to my right and went, just as I passed between 2 of the right turners a car came sliding passed fully locked up, good job he’d seen me coz I hadn’t looked, only the screech of tyres made my hit the brakes 😳

not as spectacular as yours but I still think about it occasionally, monumental stupidity, mind you I see atleast 1 car doing similar every week

I broke my neck 4 months ago, c1 & c2 fractures while out raggin the hardtail, landed on my head from about 8ft in the air. Got up after i caught my breath and got mates to help me to the car; put my bike in the car and drove home to get a shower and sleep off a stiff neck. Couldn’t get out of the car for the pain so decided to get my mum to take me to A&E…

Consultant said i was extremely lucky to survive the breaks never mind getting up and driving home afterwards! Feeling fairly fortunate after that!!!

Can’t say I have any paricularly interesting ones but my lad had a good one (and took some photos).

He was in Iraq and was woken by an artilery round passing through his accommodation block (which isn’t a bad story in itself). The shell had skipped horizontally through the base. He followed the carnage until he met this bloke:

He’d been driving along and heard a bang. He thought the engine had gone. So he stopped and found his headrest was missing.

2

first – flipped end over end then rolled a car whilst driving on my own aged 19. The car’s roof was flattened to door level in all 3 other seats except for around the driver’s seat which remained miraculously intact.

second – aged 20 I was solo winter mountaineering and ice climbing in a gully in Snowdonia when it became apparent that it was melting and water running between the rock and ice. Didn’t think I could down climb or finish the ascent with no rope, partner or anyone knowing where I was. It took me 12hrs of cacking myself to sort myself out.

Combination of the two sorted me out a treat – if everyone could have a near miss or two as part of their growing up it would be a good thing.

5thElefant – nasty. He could get whiplash without a headrest. Good excuse to get the car re-upholstered though.

asthma attack – about 10 years ago.

Motorcycle crash when racing which entailed 20+ seperate breaks (although 12 were in my femur, which was ‘segmented’) I was pretty close that day.

Another day, again on a motorcycle, 150mph overtaking a BMW, whihc turned right… but stopped as he must have seen/heard me… i went past him on the outside about 130. I very much doubt i’d have walked away.

My XR2… 😯

canoeing at Eskdale when 12 – canoe overturned – I didn’t have the strength to right it and couldn’t get out of it.
vnearly drowned.

On the road into Huddersfield form Sheffield, just before the village of Highburton, there’s a righthand bend on a downward slope into the village. One night driving back to uni halls at Storthes Hall I turned to go round the bend but just kept on going straight. Launched off the kerb, tyres dug into the grass verge when I landed and spun the car 180°, and then steered me backwards back out into the road and into the path of an Audi coming the other way. I must have missed him by about 6″. Went back up the next day to examine what might have happened, and the tyre gouges in the grass went right to the edge of the verge which was next to a 200 foot drop down into a ravine of sorts.

I still get cold sweats thinking about it.

white water rafting in the pyrenees 3 years ago.
got thrown out at the start of the roughest section.
800 meters of white water, being banged into rocks, and constantly being submerged.
honestly thought i was gonna drown.

I’ve had a couple of close calls. First one was when I was 18 coming off my motorbike at 85mph with only skin grafts and a week in hospital to show for it. Bloody lucky when you looked at the state of the bike. Second one was earlier this year when I had my brain seziure. Can’t remember anything of it but at the time my wife couldn’t find a pulse.

Neils – I did something similar to my XR2 but unfortunately I have no pictures of it.

As a kid? knocked over by an Allegro and landed on my head on the kerb
Various others as a kid.

Marsh/Huddersfield- Car flipped over a roundabout at over 70mph barrel-rolled for abit. I remember looking out of the windscreen and the night sky spinning and thinking (weeee) I tried to give a false name and address but my bestmate told them the truth. My mum read about it in our local paper with my name printed (erm oops).

Coming over Barton Bridge on the M60 the car started to go sideways. Rather than freeze up I relaxed and let the car drift whilst keeping the power on hoping it’d catch itself before hitting the armco. Phew.

Flimsy **** ell!

we used to have a battery powered forklift at work. The charging lead was too short to get it to the power point so the maintenance team decided to cut out the specific plug, replace it with a 3pin connector in the forklift cab and then make their own lead. But the **** got it the wrong way and put the female in the cab of the forklift, and made a charging lead consisting of a 3pin male at each end.

I found it, as i was coiling the lead back to the plug socket on the wall. A genuinely hairraising experince.

Hit by a car when being a bit careless crossing the road. It was the beginning of a ride and I was excited to be out using my new Pace forks.
Car was going full on 40mph, no time to brake – luckily for my leg the car hit my bike frame; luckily for my head, I was wearing a helmet and it bounced off the windscreen pillar; luckily for my spine I was wearing a Camelbak and it took the impact of landing square on my back on the road.

I’m pretty certain my helmet saved me from brain injury (or worse), but I wouldn’t like to try it again without to test the theory!

Moi? Well Windsurfing here (Bigbury) on a huge day back in Dec09. I was out on my own, 7mtr swell, 4.5 and 75ltr, down the face into no wind ans slow swell I got picked up and thrown onto the rocks the other side of the old cafe’. I broke my right foot, almost drowned on the hold down, popped up to be greated by massive rocks and a good slam in the middle of my back that winded me. After what seemed like forever I crawled up past the tide line, sat vomiting my guts up. I’ve not been back since.
(this isn’t me it’s Thorpie)

Drunkenly dropped a jumper onto an electric fire when I was a student. Woke up with a room full of black smoke and put it out. That would have taken 5 of us, including a world famous bike designer, out aged 19. Stupid.

I still break out in a sweat thinking about it 23 years later.

Force 9 in the english channel on a 30ft yacht, waves like hills, utter madness, took 11 hours to sail from Fecamp to Newhaven, we we’re actually heading for Brighton, sailed in the wake of an cargo tanker which flattened the sea, saved our lives.

My dad’s best mate worked for Townsend Thorenson ferries back in the day. he swapped his shift with a colleague and was at home when the herald tipped over.

Neils – I did something similar to my XR2 but unfortunately I have no pictures of it.

I think the vast majority of XR2’s and 3’s for that matter ended up in a scrap yard not in it’s original shape.

Came out of a left-hand bend at coming on a ton on my GSXR, to see 3 lanes of stationary traffic about 100 yards in front of me. Hit everything but knew I wasn’t going to scrub off much speed before impact. So I aimed for the least solid looking vehicle and hit it at speed. Buried the bike in the back of the car and went over the top.

I cleared 2 or 3 cars and landed on the central reservation where I slid for about a serious distance. Unbelievably I didn’t actually hit anything myself. I got up and walked away from it with serious bruising, a smashed lid, shredded leathers, a written bike and a serious insurance claim.

That was all my nine lives in one go, that one

Had a head-on with a car while descending an Alpine road a few years ago. No helmet. Lucky to get away with 3 fractured vertebrae.

Few years before that, i was snowboarding off-piste with a local I’d hooked-up with for the day. He was showing me a new route down through a bowl/chute. He dropped in first and set off a big avalanche. He didn’t make it. Really tough one to deal with as I had to do the initial search myself then call the rescue when there was no sign of him. But if I’d dropped first…

This has to rank as one of the closest and most stupidest near misses ever

Abit OT but this is great http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qygRLFjtPSo

doing handbrake turns in a seaside car park at 17. Lost it on the gravel, came to a stop with one wheel over the cliff edge.

Something large and black flew over the central reservation during gales early this year, possibly from a vehicle chassis, either way a second earlier and it might not have been good

Nearly coming off Striding Edge in crap weather.
Nearly coming off Swirral Edge in crap weather.

A chimney blew down through the roof I was sitting under in a bad storm I got buried under rubble, the table 3 feet in front of me fell 3 stories as the wall gave way they don’t know how I got out but get out I did 🙂

Hell of a thing to feel mortal when you are a teenager

2 possibles

First one – on a motorbike, idiot van driver pulls out from side road onto a country lane. I’m passing at 50+mph, hit him full-on, taking the engine off its mounts. I bent over the top and slid, amazingly missing the trees, fence posts etc which were in my way. If I’d have hit any of them it would have been game over. Fully destroyed bike, helmet, leathers, boots, gloves…….no bones broken though.

Second one – smashed the front brake on my Enduro in the Alps, thought I’d ride down with just the rear, and on the final (very steep) road section the brake failed. I was doing 30+mph and had no options other than (a) to jump off (b) to hit something to take off the speed. I chose the latter, piled into the driveway of a chalet to try and find something soft to bail onto. Failed to find said soft stuff, hit the wall of the chalet full-on. Astonishingly lucky to walk away from that with just a trashed bike and heavy bruising.

I once told the mrs her bum did indeed look big in that… 😯

About 45mins from very wet shoes.

I went to Moss Side by mistake once. 😥

stevomcd – did you have transceivers?

In my opinion you can brake this down in to 2 categories. Near death experiences that you have created/been in control of, and those you had no control of…

Out of control – Nearly drowning when I was a kid (cant recall exact age) Fell of an inflatable dinghy in to Lake Coniston. Remember just going down and down and seeing the light disappear, odly to small sphere of light above me. Was all very calm and peacful. The next thing I remember was being up on the surface struggling to breath and being rescued by a canoeist.

In Control – Skiing steep couloirs and the thought that one wrong move could mean death, no better feeling 🙂

What about riding a bike with out a helmet. Riding a bike without a helmet = death doesnt it ? 🙄

I went to Moss Side by mistake once

I was born there, 😯 they let you out then….

theotherjonv, my Uncle was meant to be on that too, can’t remember if he was captain or just a member of the crew.

Had a couple of moments;
First was a jack falling off the back of a flat back lorry on the M62, bouncing and coming through my windscreen, luckily it was the passenger side and I had no passenger that day.
another time on the motorbike going through the gap on the M62 by the big bridge and the reservoir, a gust of wind caught me and sent me across all three lanes and into the gravel by the central reservation.
But the weirdest was being hit by a van on my CBR400 and landing in the path of the oncoming traffic on Gelderd Road.
The only reason the guy in the car coming the other way didnt run over me was that he had a premonition of it happening.
(He only had one leg as the same accident had happened to him at the same spot one year earlier and he had been run over)

The only reason the guy in the car coming the other way didnt run over me was that he had a premonition of it happening.
(He only had one leg as the same accident had happened to him at the same spot one year earlier and he had been run over)

😯

It is odd how that can happen though. I recall one time up near Richmond, North Yorks and I was behind a cyclist coming up to a sweeping left bend. There was enough room to overtake it even if a car came around the corner but I decided to hold back until I was 100% sure it was safe and something in my head was telling me not to pull out. Just then a big luxury coach barrelled around the corner at a fair rate, cutting across it really badly and coming onto our carriageway. I would have been dead or dead-ish had I been alongside the bike at that moment. My passenger admitted afterwards that he thought I was being over-cautious and that he would have pulled out where I had decided to hold back.

newretrotom – yes, but there was a very complex terrain-trap. From the crown wall, the bowl went over a blind roll then separated into 3 separate chutes. Complete white-out, so I was barely aware of this and ended up searching in the wrong chute. Very unpleasant situation. The guy was buried over 1.5m so had very little chance anyway. 🙁