“He Just Wouldn't Go To The Doctor”: 57 Tragedies People Could Have Avoided If They Were Just On Time

Common scenario in high-altitude mountaineering. You pre-set a time where you have to turn around no matter what, but people run into delays and then the summit is *this* close and they don't stick to the plan. And then they're out at night and temperatures drop and oxygen runs out...

I was with my best mate in london. We arrived on london bridge later than expected. Took some photos and chatted with people around us. Walked off the bridge as a girl was running on, she stopped to chat for a minute with us. Anyway she is dead because it was the london bridge attack in 2017. If she hadnt of stopped to chat woth is, she would have been fine.

Also, my mate and I left the bridge 1-2minutes before the attack happened. Worst moment I could have tagged myself in a location before I jumped on a plane to another location.

I’m 37. My mother won’t let me travel anymore unless she has my locations 24/7. Because for 12hours she thought I was the dead Australian girl on the bridge.

I never talk about this because it just cuts too deep, but something about being anonymous on Reddit makes me feel safe. As a teen, I was friends with a girl who was honestly one of the best people I have ever known. Her smile lit up a room, and she was truly kind to a fault. During our junior year of high school, she woke up late one morning, which messed up her usual routine and caused her to rely on public transportation to get to school. While waiting for the bus, she somehow came in contact with a vile humanbeing who lured her into an abandoned building where he [attacked] and strangled her! She was missing for approximately a week before her body was finally found. Her killer was at large for close to decade before DNA evidence in another case finally brought him to justice. He is currently serving life in prison, which, in my opinion, is too little of a penalty for someone who deprived the world of such an amazing person.

Over twenty years have passed, and I'm still racked with guilt! Would she be alive if I had called to make sure she was awake? Should I have shown up at her door to make sure she got the bus?

The 304 victims of the Sewol ferry that died because the adults and people in power were late in making decisions/responding. The message for passengers to evacuate came late so passengers were trapped in the ship. The approval for emergency response came late so the rescue operations came late. I cannot look at pictures of the rows of neatly arranged wreaths representing each high school student that died (around 250) without feeling the need to bawl. What's worse is that the captain and most of the crew were able to escape, only three crew members tried to help the passengers and died.

There was an empty seat at my sibling’s high school graduation. The student died in a crash hustling over on the way there. His best friend found out during the ceremony and broke down in front of a stadium full of people.

9/11. Everyone talks about the people who were late and survived, but my cousin's husband left extra early that day. He stopped to help an old lady carry her groceries, walked into his 98th floor office 2 minutes before the first plane hit. He never came home.

My father was late meeting me for dinner one night. We ended up meeting about an hour later than intended. When we left and were crossing the street he walked a bit ahead of me, I got distracted by a friend saying hi at the crosswalk. When I turned to catch up to my dad he was hit by a car driven by a man running from the cops going 60mph. If we had just met for dinner at the intended time we would have been done eating and home before that guy sped through the downtown area.

Leslie Mahaffey. The second victim of Paul Bernardo amd Karla Homolka. When she was late for curfew, her parents locked her out of the house. That's when she ran into Bernardo.

My aunt missed her flight out of Denver on July, 19 1989. She took United flight 232 instead, dying in a fiery crash in Sioux City, IA.

My uncle was supposed to be at a meeting on 9/11 and then meet my aunt and dad who was in town for work for a late breakfast. His meeting ran late and he never made it to breakfast.

A good friend of mine started coughing. He had a good job with good benefits (this is the US) and he was 40, but he went for the cheapest insurance option his company offered, so he was terrified of being stuck with paying a high deductible*. So, he put off going to the doctor. For weeks. Then, when coming downstairs, he started having real respiratory distress. One of his roomates, another friend of mine, tried to help him on the stairs, but he died of what turned out to be an advanced case of pneumonia. As I said, he was 40. It makes me angry to think about to this day.

My dad had a heart attack and waited 6 days to call an ambulance, when he was hospitalised we found out later it had caused half his heart tissue to die.

He died the day after Father’s Day 2021 and according to the nurses he was in a good mood speaking to them when he passed mid sentence. He’d been terrified of passing on Father’s Day itself as his father had died a couple of years ago on that day.

I still have mixed emotions about it because he thought himself too tough to accept medical help and knew what the symptoms of a heart attack were because his mother had heart issues. (I know that heart attack symptoms present different in men and women.)

He was a difficult patient when he had other medical issues but when he was in the hospital that time he was gentle as a lamb and very patient with the nurses and doctors. I thought it was eerie at the time but I think he knew what damage he’d caused himself and realised what was coming.

I will never forget the video of the tsunami in Japan.

2 cars were driving away from the oncoming wave.

The car in front, was stopping at all the stop signs. The car behind waited for the car in front.

Both cars were caught, and the drivers clearly were k****d horribly by the tsunami wave. If they had just "broken the law" and sped away, they would've likely survived.

A really haunting one is the Titanic sinking.

Most people think of the passengers who missed the ship as the lucky ones, but there were also cases where being late actually sealed someone’s fate. A few passengers only boarded at the last moment due to delays, missed earlier chances to switch ships, or were reassigned cabins some even ended up in worse locations on the ship because of it. If they’d been earlier, they might’ve had better access to lifeboats or even chosen a different voyage entirely.

Another example comes from the September 11 attacks. While there are well-known stories of people surviving because they were late to work, there were also tragic inverses people who *normally* would have been out of the towers but were delayed that morning for one reason or another and ended up being inside when the planes hit.

There’s also the Costa Concordia disaster, where confusion and delays in evacuation meant some passengers who hesitated or arrived late to muster stations missed lifeboats entirely.

What makes these stories hit so hard is how small the timing differences are minutes, sometimes even seconds. It’s one of those uncomfortable reminders that luck often plays a bigger role than people like to admit.

My neighbor was going to visit her parents in Korea. They were taking care of the tickets for her, but she didn't realize she needed a VISA so she missed the original flight. A few days later she was on the airplane that the Soviet Union shot down.

My mom ignored GI issues and constipation for months and months. By the time she finally got to the hospital she was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer, sepsis, fluid in her lungs and all in her abdominal cavity, and she had a 50 pound tumor on her ovary (it had metastasized to pretty much everywhere) she died less than 22 months later.

My grandma died because she didn't want to worry us. She had several anginas over the course of a week and only told me, a 11 year old at the time. One afternoon she asked me to go with her to the ER. They sent her to the hospital (I went home, my aunt went with her) and spend the night waiting to be discharged since everything seemed ok. My aunt went downstairs to have a coffee; at her return, my grandma was no longer in the room, having passed away suddenly.

She was so good she went just like that.

My uncle was k****d by a gang in his apartment parking lot. He wasn't the intended target, but he had slept though his alarm and was getting in his car when a crew came up on him. If he didn't miss his alarm, there would have been a different white car in the parking lot that would have been shot up instead. The police were able to catch the shooters only because the other guy knew who was after him and went to the police after the shooting.

Many people in the South Tower of the World Trade Center evacuated from the building, shortly after the North Tower was hit. Many were told that it only impacted the North Tower, and that they would be fine. Many returned back to work after evacuating, some were wishy washy on evacuating, and some evacuated anyway. The famous survivor Stanley Praimnath had already evacuated, but was goaded to return back to his office, along with several people he worked with. He went back up. He was on the 81st floor, right where the South tower was hit. He actually watched the plane come in too. He was rescued, but I believe he was one of the only, if not the only person from his floor who survived. Who knows how many people would have survived if they had not returned to their offices.

The recent tragedy of the Dana in Valencia, Spain. Over 200 deaths due to the mayor/president being on a date with a news reporter in a private restaurant which led to a delay on sending the alert for the population to seek shelter in high altitude areas/buildings.