62 People Share The Scariest Few Seconds Of Their Lives, And Explain How They Survived

More like “another foot over”, but I was at work walking with some clients (3 kids around 8-9) and 2 other staff down the street. It was raining, and the roads were slick. This car coming our direction fast loses control on the wet pavement, skids in our direction onto the sidewalk we are walking on, slides about a foot past us (close enough to get our pant legs wet, but not our jackets, because the water never got high enough due to its launch point being so close to us), slammed into a tree behind us, bounced off the tree and kept driving several hundred yards down the road before the guy brought the car to a halt.

The driver was fine somehow, and none of us got hurt, but it was scary as hell and definitely had me thinking I could’ve died that day.

I can’t be sure that I was a “second from being gone” exactly, but it was one of those moments that I really had to pause and think, and it shook me up pretty bad.

I used to commute about an hour each day to school via a main interstate, and one morning I was plodding along in slightly congested traffic in the middle lane of the three lanes. (I try to obey traffic laws and only use the left lane for passing only.) Suddenly in the left lane a loaded down dump truck flew past me going probably 90, and I remember yelling “You are going to hurt somebody!” in my car. About 15 seconds later, brake lights are all illuminated in front of me and we come to a stop.

That dump truck had rear ended a small vehicle and there was hardly anything left of it, it looked like pieces of tin foil were scattered in the road and wrapped around the axles of this truck. And the air smelt like burnt rubber. I pretty much cried for the remaining 45 minutes of my drive that morning, thinking how easily that could have been me. The part that is burned in my mind the most is that the man’s shoes (the driver of the small car) were in the road pretty far from his car. It just drove home the point that, man, there was definitely a human being in that wreckage.

Sorry for the downer but I guess it’s hard to have a happy story in a thread like this. I guess to extrapolate a positive message from it, don’t drive too fast to stop, especially if you drive a big vehicle, and don’t forget that all those cars on the road are filled with people with families - so drive like it.

Tl;dr - Was in a lane next to a horrible wreck on the interstate, the driver’s shoes were laying in the road from impact and it really shook me up.

I have numerous bad occasions with bikes , but a near-end experience really takes the cake. It was my dad, brother and I on a trail. We are riding downhill which then led to a sharp right turn. I am in front going fast and by the time i realized the degree of the turn it was too late. I did my best to slow down but at this point i knew it was too late . I knew this was it. I was going about 30-35 mph. Somehow, I managed to hit a tree right in the center when making the turn. If I was a few inches off to the left or right, I would have fell down a cliff.

Not me but my dad was supposed to be in the World Trade Center during 9/11. On the way there (we lived quite far away) he crashed with another car and broke his arm but the setback made him cancel his trip, if he didn’t get hit by the car...

About to cross the road and a car zooms past from the wrong side.
I was lucky. Very lucky.

This happened about a year ago.

I work as an installation engineer on large tanker vessels. I was installing a Torque meter on the shaft of a Chemical tanker.

I spent the first-hour explaining things to the Chief engineer, that I would need help from a member of his crew and that the shaft would be locked with the Turning gear and tagged out for 2 days. this should be no issue as the vessel was due to take 3 days to offload and be cleaned.

I get to the shaft and there isn't much room. so I take up the floor above the shaft, sit on the shaft and begin attaching some sensors. I notice the crew member is being radioed in Korean (Korean crew), I don't think anything of it until I notice he is gone. This is frustrating as I cannot work on the shaft alone due to health and safety, so I get up to go find him. as I get off the shaft I hear a huge jet of air and the engine fires up with the shaft engaged and turning Fast. I was so shocked as if I had been sitting where I was I would have been slammed into the surrounding metal by an engine that produces 5MWs of power on startup.

​

​

Bonus: obviously annoyed I went to "speak" to the chief, after explaining he had almost just ended me by removing two safety measures (including cutting a padlock off a breaker). he looked at me laughed and told me he had forgotten I was working down there.

I just picked up my tools and left the vessel, reported what happened to my boss and ripped up the Purchase Order and I took a flight home.

​.

Almost got decapitated by an unattended slackline while riding my bike through the park in the middle of my college. I saw it and ducked down a quarter second before it was too late.

I posted about it in my university's subreddit recently, years later, and they turned it into a meme...

Driving behind a pickup truck on the LA freeway with a massive load of furniture piled in the bed. Just as I am pulling up to this thing to get around it all the furniture comes flying out the back. I had to swerve, going full freeway speeds, multiple lanes to avoid hitting anything. Somehow I managed to avoid everything and maintain control of my car. My adrenaline was pounding the hardest I had ever felt. I didn't even think to look back and see what happened behind me.

That same day, late at night on a desert road (was on a long road trip)... I was booking and *again* had to swerve, but this time around a giant black dog straight up just standing in the middle of the road. We are talking waaaaaay out in the middle of nowhere. Just this massive black shaggy dog standing there. Didn't even look up at the car as I barely got around it. Here's the craziest part of this... a handful of miles down the road I had to stop at this tiny little rickety single pump gas station. Super old and run down but actually had a pump with a card slot. It's like 2 am, there is one little flickering light above the pump. Pitch black everywhere around. I'm standing there pumping my gas. A cat walks into the light and passed me.... followed by a big massive shaggy black dog. I had probably pumped 2 gallons, I got right back in my car and bounced out of there.

Basically I got t-boned by a van while riding my bicycle. Missed me by a couple inches, destroyed the back of the bike, and threw me into traffic.

A second doesn't really apply to my story, but about an hour does. When I was in second grade my appendix swole up and burst. I had severe pain for weeks while the doctors tried to figure out what was wrong. After staying at the hospital for some time, they suddenly said they needed to operate. They had finally figured out what was wrong and had to basically clean out my insides. Since it had burst quite some time ago, I was in a pretty critical state. If they hadn't realized soon after they did, I wouldn't be here.

I passed out at work and came around in the hospital. They diagnosed a bleed on the brain and eventually decided to drill a hole in my skull to drain the fluid. Just as they were about to put me under, the phone rang. It was the Head of Neurology. I actually had a burst aneurysm. According to my doctor, I would have probably been gone seconds after they started the surgery.

Got one! Rolled up over a small hill and signaled left. No oncoming traffic so I drift to the middle of the road on a lazy north Maine “highway”. Start to slow and hear screeching breaks... look to the rear view and only see grill of the pulp truck that just barreled over the hill. Impact. My truck is whipped around until I’m basically driver door to driver door with this semi. We slide across the oncoming lane and my truck drops into the ditch, but the pulp truck keeps going. The back of the rig starts tearing up my hood, then hits the crossbar by the door. More shattering glass. The whole side of the car begins to crumple towards me like a tin can. Can’t tell if it’s real time or I’m going to pass away slow-mo. Trailer and what’s left of my truck stops about 8 inches from my face/chest. Breath and exit with almost no injury.

My boyfriend, myself and a friend of ours were night swimming. Another friend almost knocked an industrial flood light into the pool while we were in there and caught it by the cord at the last minute. The idea of that guy having ended a human life was funny enough to make the experience less scary but still, dang. We were almost gone! Wow.

Checking tire pressure on the drive tires of a semi. I was between the two rear axles and the front was raised on ramps. The brakes failed, I felt it shift and I slid out before it completely rolled off the ramp.

I was working construction during summers back in high school. This is kinda hard to explain, but we were scrubbing the giant wooden beams that formed the support structure of this barn/garage that was around four stories tall with a chemical that made the wood look better. Dumbest job I've ever worked on.

Since it was a big building we were using wheeled scaffolding (with brakes) inside to get to the roof beams. This building, being a garage as well, had long drainage troughs running the length to drain fluids from vehicle repairs and whatever else. The problem is that the drainage troughs didn't have grating over them at the time, leaving them completely open. So as I was moving my three story scaffold from one beam to the next, both of the wheels on my side fell into one of the drainage troughs. You ever read those stories about mothers lifting cars off their children? It was one of those moments. Adrenaline kicked in and I heaved all of that tube steel out and back onto level ground, saving myself from being crushed as the area I was in had nothing to stop all three stories from crashing down on my head. Nobody else saw a thing it all happened so fast. I took the next two days off work (happened on a Wednesday) so I had four days off to recover my sore muscles.

If I had been anywhere but exactly in the middle of the broad side of the scaffold, I would've been gone nine years ago. Alternatively, if I had been on the other side I would've ended one of the other workers.

I know this doesn't fit the exact letter of the question, since it's more about placement than timing, but people in real life don't usually believe me so I don't get many chances to tell it.

I was driving home pretty late at night after work when I still lived at my parents’ house. Their house is about half an hour out of town on a good day, and you have to take rural highways and gravel roads with plenty of steep hills and tight curves.

It was the first snow of the winter and it came very suddenly and heavily, the roads were completely covered and slippery. I was making my way home slowly, barely going over 20 mph. One second it seemed like everything was fine, the next second my car was sliding what seemed like way too quickly. It was moving at an angle directly across the oncoming lane of traffic while a semi was approaching and going way too fast to ever slow down in time in the snow. Thankfully, my car got across the road and hit a snow bank in the ditch before the semi got to me, but if my car had slid just a second later I can’t imagine that I’d still be alive.

So yeah, now I am deathly afraid of driving in snow and will do just about anything to avoid it.

I was driving home late one night on a major freeway and on a curve when I turned the corner when I noticed the car in front of me suddenly slow to a stop and turn on their hazards, so I did the same (we were going 75 so this was very abrupt, and scary because there were cars behind me). The scene in front of me was horrific. A car had gotten on the freeway going the wrong way, and there were major collisions littered all over the freeway of people trying to avoid them, and not more than 10 feet away was the car that caused it all, totaled, facing me. I couldn't even believe my eyes. No police, no fire department, and I was the first person to call 911.

With cars going 75 mph, one second later and I almost certainly would have been involved in one of those crashes. I think about that moment all the time and feel so lucky that I avoided it so narrowly.

I was behind a car at a red light. It then turned green, the car in front turned right and I took a few extra seconds as I'd been turning on the aircon. As I took my foot off the brake another car (SUV) coming from the left (I'm in Australia) ran the red light doing the speed limit of 60km/hr. She slammed the brakes on and stopped in the centre of the intersection with a look of OMFG on her face. She was inches from hitting the car in front of me as he was turning.

If I hadn't been fiddling with the aircon and gone immediately after the car in front that woman would've smacked into me, my passenger side, in my new car.

The next day I installed my dashcam which I'd kept forgetting to do.

I can not confirm whether this would have been the end however it would have changed my and my parents life like it. I was about 6 or 7 and I went along with my mum to go train the new puppy we had. The training ground was quite far away from home and I remember that it was a big field surrounded by a forest and a motorway on the side of it. I was told to stay in the car and play on my gameboy (back when they were a thing lol). After an hour or so I got bored and I went to have a look at where my mum was with our puppy. The carpark was a little while from the training ground but I decided to walk towards her anyway. In the meantime an older man (30ish) starts talking to me and the naive little boy I was I talked back (regardless of all the times my mum told me to NOT TALK TO STRANGERS). He convinced me I was going the wrong way and told me he would take me to my mum and puppy has. We ended up by the motorway side and we were about to walk down the bank to the side of the motorway where his car was parked. As I am about to disappear down the bank I hear the loudest scream of my name from my mum, I look back and feel the grip of the man tighten on my hand but I was just in time to get my hand out of his grip and run towards my mother. My mum runs past me to see where this guy is but he had just got into his car and drove off. To this day I still imagine about the what if scenario and how close I was to being kidnapped and potentially gone.

My family and I were driving down the highway when we see a STOPPED SUV IN THE MIDDLE OF THE HIGHWAY WITH A FAMILY OF 6 INSIDE and the car in front of us didn’t get out of the way until the last second.