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Instead of an 'oh my god I could have died ...' here's an 'oh my god, I'm gonna die ...' moment:
On the bike (same one as before) I was heading to the West country (to Truro, in Cornwall). It had been raining so the roads were damp and there was a bit of spray so I was taking a little more care than usual. Then I come to a bif of the road that does two things - one, it dips to go under a rail bridge. No real issue so down I go, only to see that the 'road' under the bridge is actually wooden planking. Wet wooden planking. And two it curves slightly to the left. That second or so of 'who the hell put ***** planking there?' and 'oh hell I have to lean the bike and I hope there's no oncoming traffic in case I bin it' was .. interesting. Happily I managed to go quite wide as there was no vehicles coming the other way and the bike did not even twitch, which I am still not convinced about!
All this angst could have been headed off at the pass many years ago when I was 16 and proud possesor of a moped. Not sure why I was there now (it was aloooooong time ago), but I was in a local village heading home. There is a (on leaving) right hand bend with a bus stop/lay-by just before the turn. I was just passing that lay-by when a truck came round the bend, towrad me. I can only assume he'd under-estimated the radius of the bend as he was wholly on my side of the road. I flung the moped sideways into the lay-by and slammed on the brakes before it ran out and sat there quivering! A half second, or less, difference in arrival times and it woudl have been a far different outcome.
For an actual, hairy moment when I could have died, there's the time I was coming back from work at the Kennedy Space Center on my motorcycle 40 years ago. I always took the 30 miles of twisty two lane road (State Road 3) down the length of the then still relatively undeveloped narrow sandbar on the east edge of the Indian River Lagoon going south between Cocoa Beach and Indian Harbour Beach called "Merrit Island". It had some abandoned orange groves along the way and I'd sometimes pull off into one a ways and smoke a dooby before continuing. Nice quiet place to enjoy that particular pleasure. Beautiful tropical scenery of the lagoon, lizards, storks, spiders, quail, rabbits, snakes and no people. But after I got back on the nearly vacant road, for some reason I decided to test my motorcycle brakes for stopping distance. I did my test and was pleased to see that I could stop without skidding in very quick order. But as I looked up into my mirror there was a car barreling down on me at great speed turning at just the last minute to go around me with the driver giving me a very dedicated one-finger vulgar salute.
I was almost a smear on the tarmac. I guess the road wasn't as vacant as I had thought. 
...OK never had a near death moment as many have mentioned here but one that felt at the time like it could have been..
It happened back in the 70s on a flight form Milwaukee to New Orleans. Always looking to avoid going through O'Hare as it was a total mess back in the day, I found a direct flight that made two stops, one in Cleveland, the other in Pittsburgh, and involved no change of plane. Now it was a very nice sunny spring day and even surprisingly warm after a night of bucketing rain, so bad weather wasn't the issue. However this trip was less than a week after the disastrous collision of those two 747s in the Canary Islands. The flight started out routine, we landed in Cleveland following a smooth flight, then after taking on a few more passengers taxied out for the next leg to Pittsburgh. Back then Cleveland was a major hub for United and thus fairly busy so it was not uncommon to see one plane in the distance on approach to the same runway another was taking off on.
We accelerated down the runway but before we rotated (the nose of the plane coming up) the flaps went full, thrust reversers were engaged, spoilers came up, and brakes were applied as the take off was aborted. We stopped and sat for several moments right there in the middle of the runway then began to taxi slowly, passing one turn out, then another. All the while in the back of my mind was the smoke trail another aircraft I saw on approach when we first turned onto the runway for take off. At the third turn out, we finally left the runway and mere seconds after we did there was a loud rumble as that aircraft I saw in the distance earlier, made its landing right behind us. Now to most not aware, this may have seemed like nothing to be concerned about, until the Canary Islands accident came to mind. Yes this was what is termed as a very "near miss", and I had and wondered why the pilots didn't leave the runway at the first turnout (which they could have done). We did not return to the terminal but instead sat on the parallel taxiway for a while after which one of the pilots mentioned that they aborted the takeoff because a warning light that came on, and after double checking all the systems, said it was a false alarm and we were good to go. OK I thought to myself, we had a near ground collision because some kind of warning light came on during takeoff. We turned headed back to the runway this time taking off successfully with myself l clenching the armrests a little more firmly than normal.
...end of story? Not quite.
On our final approach to Pittsburgh we encountered very severe turbulence. The runway we were assigned to involved descending over some very hilly and tree covered terrain as well as a bluff just before the threshold. Now I've experienced turbulence before, but nothing like this as we were literally pitching yawing and rocking from to side, at times even sliding sideways in the air (this was a big Boeing 727-200 not some turboprop driven puddle jumper) to the point it felt more like I was on some demented carnival ride instead of an aeroplane. I actually closed my eyes for the landing (the only time I have ever done so) during which we bounced and wobbled in the air a couple times before finally setting down.
Now up to this time I had been been in all sorts planes from a 1920s Ford Tri Motor, to a Cessna (both as passenger and pilot), to an open cockpit biplane (in which we performed aerobatics), to a 747 across the Atlantic, flown through rain and snow storms yet never been unnerved or worried about flying until that day. One near incident was bad enough, two was pushing it, three, I thought, could be the "charm" and possibly in a bad way. As I was getting up and retrieving my belongings one of the attendants mentioned this was Pittsburgh and not not New Orleans. I told her "We missed a ground collision with another aircraft by mere seconds at our last stop only days after what happened in the Canary Islands, next we were thrown all over the sky by the worst turbulence I ever experienced during approach to a runway which has bluff in front of it and made a rather rough landing. That is two (I held up two fingers) close calls in one flight". I commend the pilots for getting us down safely but am going to see about taking the train for the rest of this trip."
She told me to wait and went and got her supervisor as well as one of the flight crew who did their best to reassure me everything was all right and there was no serous weather ahead on the final leg of the flight. She said I could get a refund of the remainder of my ticket, but mentioned but that there was no direct train service from Pittsburgh and I'd have to go through Washington DC to get to New Orleans (about another day and a half travel total). Thought about that and remembered there would be people meeting me at the New Orleans airport who were probably already on their way there (this was back in the days when we didn't have the instantaneous communication we take for granted today), so I stowed my carry on items and sat back down.
Indeed, the last two hours of the flight was surprisingly (for myself) blissfully uneventful and smooth as if we were on the smoothest rails ever, even the landing. Needless to say the attendants didn't charge me for the four drinks I ordered which may have helped "smooth things out" a bit.
Thanks to everybody who has posted here so far. It's been a good read, as I thought it might be. Everyone has the occasional close call and it is good to hear that they don't always end badly.
I left out my "wildlife encounters", as I'm sure folks have had their share of "oh sh!t" moments there, but I did have one where I wondered if the guy behind me had clean underwear afterwards. I drive to work before sunrise, and this time of year certain wild animals tend to run across the roads; one morning I split a herd of deer (drove between them as they ran across) and the guy behind me had to stop rather abruptly... Served him right for being too close in snowy weather (I rather dislike being basically tailgated for no good reason).
My little tail to tell is not nearly as harrowing as many of the others but it is still one that sticks with me.
Many years ago - I think in the fifth or sixth grade, I liked to do cartwheels. My bed was on the second floor with a window just to the side of the headboard. You can probably guess the rest. One day, for whatever reason, I decided to practice my cartwheel on my bed. Well, I misjudged. I did the cartwheel, but my foot decided not to land on the bed. It went and broke the window. I don't think I was even cut. The only reason I remember being scared is because my Dad yelled and carried on about how I could have gone out the window instead of just breaking it. My getting in trouble for breaking the window scared me a lot more than the possibility of me going out it. I have matured (a bit) since that day.
Hmzzzz, stood next to a ruïned car (Opel Astra type B turn into a Opel Astra type B sportscoupe after landing on it's roof on the hard shoulder of a motorway after a 180 degree barrel rol of epic proportions and a lot of airtime, and followed by a skid on the roof of 60 feet, with a ditch on the left side and ongoing traffic on the right (eh, upside down))....and the shredder person said to me, "you are lucky, I know car crashes and a car like that does only yield corpses" while he pointed at the remains of my car. Well I said, "far from it to discredit your work experience but I beg to differ, because that is my car.". He looked to me like I was "Le zombie du jour".
Lesson learned, if you have not slept for three nights (I suffer from chronic insomnia which comes and goes), driving 80 miles to work in januari is not cool.
Greets, ArtisanS
I don't have any personal "close call" stories (unless you consider my hot water quitting in the middle of my shower about a week ago; brrrr!), but I have two of former co-workers.
One of my co-workers back in the 1980s told me he had just finished working on his first cobol program at his job, and he was about to press the "enter" key to submit it for compliation. At that moment, the power went out in the entire city where he was. There was a moment of self-doubt before he realized his program was only being compiled, not executed!
A lady who used to work at my company once told me she had escaped one of the WTC towers on that terrible day of 9-11. That sort of thing really changes you almost down to your DNA.
Many years ago, when I was in college, I had a summer job driving a truck the size of a mid-sized Uhaul truck. I had a full load and it had been raining, so the roads were wet. I was driving back through Boston Mass on the highway, when the line of cars in front of me stopped. I slammed on the brakes and tried to turn into the next lane, which had a longer distance, at the same time. NEVER DO THIS!!! I ended up doing an 180 degree spin, hitting the curb between the east and west dirrections and, going over on two wheels and comming back down facing into traffick. I didn't hit anything but the curbing. I sat there with my knees shaking until i could turn arround and continue home. The company I worked for bought new tires for the truck after that.
Gus