Once, I was driving down a six-lane highway, going 70+ mph, when suddenly, out of nowhere, one of my tires blew.
The car was now far less under my control, skidding and swerving, and I desperately tried to tame it just long enough to get to the shoulder – across multiple lanes – without hitting anyone.
How close I came to any actual impact, I have no idea. I don’t remember. All I recall is that when I got out on the shoulder, I said, “Ok. Well. I’m alive.”
I canceled whatever I was going to do. I didn’t care at all. I’d survived and that was literally all that mattered.
These stories are intense and memorable, and as these Reddit posts will demonstrate, also very disquieting.
1. The Boston Marathon
My father competed in the Boston marathon the year of the bombing.
Thankfully he finished about 90 minutes before the explosion and we already away from the race.
– Brick_On_A_Stick
2. Seen Saw
I was cutting a tree with a chainsaw. The saw wasn’t mine, it was old, and I don’t know how well maintained it was. The chain broke and came whipping back at me. I didn’t even react, it was too fast. I didn’t feel any pain, I turned and saw the chain was hanging, half stuck into a tree behind me at head/neck level. The tree was directly behind me, in a straight line from the chainsaw. Somehow the chain whipped off, curved around my head/neck and buried itself in a tree 3 feet behind me. If it had gone straight I would be dead or disfigured.
I didn’t even try and take the chain with me, I just called it a day, walked off, and didn’t pick up another chainsaw for about six or seven years.
Whew!
– dances_w_dingoes
3. Off the Chain (Seriously these things are dangerous)
Was helping two other people cut down a tree with a chainsaw after a storm that knocked out power, we had to get specific trees down before the electric company would come out to fix the lines.
The tree snapped and gave way above the chainsaw cut and kissed my lip. If I was standing an inch further it would have been…. extremely painful.
– MooseOnTehLoose
4. Mr. Plow
I was as living in Utah and going to work at 5 in the morning. It was January and there was a fair amount of snow on the road.
I was crawling down the icy hill that I lived on that has a traffic light at the bottom. I was about to go through the intersection since it was green for me when I noticed a snow plow that definitely wasn’t going to stop at his red light.
Luckily I was paying attention and was able to stop before the light. I definitely would have been t-boned if I had kept going.
– blanksource
5. The Straight Dope
Partying in Mexico dance club, Tijuana. I went to bathroom, on the way there was a group of people smoking pot, they offered, so I took a hit. I proceeded to go into the bathroom and pee. When I came out of bathroom, the group of people smoking pot were being arrested by federalis (Mexico police).
I just kept on walkin! Mexico jail is the last place I would want to be.
– Hollywood899
6. Come on and Slam
We visit my in-law’s every single Saturday for dinner. We leave around the same time and take the same exact route home. This time, I realized we forgot something so I told my husband to get into the other lane to go straight and head back to their house instead of taking the exit for the highway.
We are sitting at the red light and suddenly a loud screeching sound of someone slamming on their breaks as they try to not go through the red light in the lane we were supposed to be in. Then another person follows suite and slams right into them.
The second person hit so hard she knocked herself out and knocked the first car through the intersection and they went about 75 feet. I just had back surgery so it would not have ended so well for us. The girl in the second car had no idea what happened.
– Rarely_Trust
7. C-
Making out with my girlfriend at the time. She was on top of me and leaned in and whispered that she wanted to have s**. I told her I didn’t have any condoms and that we’d have to go get some, but she got frustrated and said that we could anyways, but eventually said nevermind.
Next day I’m at work and she pops in to apologize. I tell her it’s not a big deal and that I’ll see her after work only for her to say, “No no, I shouldn’t have put pressure on you and acted like that. I need you to know to have hepatitis C so we need to be careful.”
Big bullet dodged. We broke up a couple weeks later after even more s**t from her past that she hid came out into the open.
– omgwowloljkstfu
8. Stuck in the Middle With You
Living in southern Vermont, I work for a small software company, wife teaching at a small local college.
We decide to move to the southwest, wife gets a job, we sell house & move cross country.
Within a year my company was sold and most employees let go, wife’s college closed.
We would have been stuck with a hard to sell house and the only possible jobs at least an hour away.
Happy where we are, timing is everything
– Bechimo
9. Legalize It
One night my freshmen year of college, my then boyfriend and a few friends had the idea to drive through the night to a lake upstate and smoke some weed while the sun came up. We were in a state where marijuana was very much illegal (still is, Deep South). I opted not to go with them because I had an 8AM class in the morning.
Cut to me freaking out the following afternoon when their car still wasn’t back and I hadn’t heard from them all day. They all got arrested for possession, and spent the night in jail. Thankfully they were bailed out but they all had some long term probation and reduced job opportunities afterwards that affected them for a few years.
– kthrin11
10. BMW’s Can’t Corner
When I was in my 20s in the UK drinking with my friends 2 brothers offered to give me and friend Tommy a ride into Doncaster which was about 8 miles away to go to a club. We declined because they were leaving at that moment but weren’t ready yet. The older brother worked for a car dealership and was always driving different new cars. Porsche BMW etc. This particular night he was in a fancy new BMW. He was driving,brother in the passenger seat and their 2 girlfriends in the back seat.
Maybe an hour later we jumped into a taxi and set off to Doncaster. About 4 miles into the journey we came to a police road block and had to turn around and go a different route. The next day we found out there had been a crash. The car was totally ripped apart. The driver had gone around a bend and lost control and ran into a 3’x3’ brick column. The two brothers and one of the girls died on impact. As the car had ripped open the remaining girl basically kept going down the street in her seat. I think they put her in a coma until she had healed some. She lived but was very badly hurt.
At their funeral I was talking to one of the drivers coworkers and he said..I can’t believe he tried to go around that bend like that,we all know BMW’s can’t corner. Very sad but me and my best friend dodged a bullet. This happened at least 20 years ago.
– usernamebj69
11. Manipulative.
“I always had a crush on a girl I used to be friends with in high school.
Around 6-7 years after we graduated I finally asked her out and after a while we started dating.
It was going great until I started seeing signs of her being manipulative. Then when it came to her venting to me about how she misses her daughter and doesn’t have full custody she would say different reasons almost every time. I didn’t say anything about it or call her out but then the gaslighting came.
We would have simple disagreements in opinions on certain things which is fine. But during the fights she would tell me that I’m sensitive because I always tried to defuse the fight onto another topic because I knew I was wrong. Then after we both cooled off to talk about it she would completely deny that she said anything and that I’m just imagining things.
It started to make me feel crazy like what if she’s right?
Cut it off about a week after.
Turns out she had been discharged from the military for psychological problems and also the reason she didn’t have custody.
– StraightToJail__
12. The Collapse
Not me but my dad.
He placed hockey as a child and one day he wasn’t going to go to the practice. Decided at the last minute that he would go after all and headed to the arena. When he got there and walked in the door the entire roof collapsed, blowing him back out of the doorway.
Several of his classmates were killed that day.
If anyone wants to look it up it was the Listowel Ontario arena collapse.
– My_fair_ladies1872
13. The Virgin Islands
When I was a dumb young woman I lived in St. Thomas Virgin Islands. I worked in an area that could be very sketchy after dark.
One night after work I got really drunk. I stumbled into a taxi to head home. So drunk I’m not even sure how I gave him my address. When we arrived I started digging in my pocket for cash to pay the taxi driver and he reached over and said “no, no baby. I’m not a taxi. I just wanted to make sure you got home ok”.
Apparently I had just jumped into a random car.
I will be forever grateful to this stranger and much more careful in my after work decisions.
– mixednuts_trailmix
14. The Bad Doctor
At about [the age of 10], my school referred me to a specific psychiatrist. I was my normal oblivious self but my mom decided we were noping right the heck out of there after she talked to him for five minutes.
10 years later we found out he had a string of victims that were in my demographic at the time. Thank God for Mom-intuition.
– dandudeus
15. Catch That Bell
I was on my way to taco bell in the back of a friends small truck. The cab was full so I was in the bed. We passed by my apartment on the way and I chose to have him drop me off (it was a bit chilly in the open air back there).
By the time I got into my apartment I had a snapchat from the driver. It was a picture of his totalled truck.
While he was stopped at an intersection, a drunk driver approached from the opposite direction going 100+. The driver clipped a bus causing an abrupt stop and his whole engine to rip out of his car, fly through the intersection and into my friends truck where I had been riding, unseatbelted moments before.
None of my friends were injured. I think both the people in the other car died.
– tubahero
16. The Boys and Girls Club
When I was 10, I had a friend who had a Boys and Girls club adult mentor. My friend invited me to come meet him, and I was immediately creeped out. The way the dude smiled at me still gives me nightmares.
Two days later, a local news story identified him as a child molester, and he had been molesting my friend for two years at that point. I will always trust my gut when it says “get the f**k outta here.”
– Mikeronomicon
17. A Lot of Gall
Had gall stones and the doctor game me a choice between surgery to remove the gall bladder or antibiotics. I choose the surgery, which is very unlike me.
When they started the surgery they found out the gall bladder had burst and the stones were in my body cavity. What was supposed to be a short procedure through the belly button turned into a 10″ incision to remove the stones.
I was supposed to leave the hospital that day, but it turned into a week. However, if I chose antibiotics and went home with a burst gall bladder, I probably would have died of sepsis.
– Wu-Kang
18. Hail Xenu
I was dating a girl for a while, and despite living and working on the opposite side of town, she’d always be near this one neighborhood coffee shop that I frequented, so I’d randomly run into her there and ask what brought her to that neck of the woods. She’s usually reply “grabbing some coffee” or “I had a hunch you’d be here and wanted to say hi”
One day she up and moves out of the state with zero warning, and tells me that we aren’t dating anymore. I was confused, but it was casual so while it sucked I just thought “oh she probably had some family emergency or something and didn’t want to tell me.”
A few weeks later on her snap chat I see that she’s just making absolute STACKS in San Diego, and is always wearing the same uniform in these pictures. I was a bit confused but didn’t think much of it.
I started dating this other chick who frequented the aforementioned coffee shop, and after a month or two of dating, the first chick comes back and starts hanging out with her a bunch around the same neighborhood the coffee shop was in. A week later, BOTH of them are moving to San Diego, and want me to come with them, live with them, and work where they work. Something just felt EXTREMELY fishy, so I said no, and off they went.
Eventually a picture got posted with both of them in it, in front of a very strange but very instantly familiar building. The HQ of the Church of Scientology.
The reason the original chick was always in that neighborhood is because kitty corner from the coffee shop was the local chapter of the church of Scientology. She got pretty ingrained in the church, and moved to San Diego to work for them, then came back to recruit gullible people to come back with her.
And that’s the story of how I lost two girlfriends to the church of Scientology, and was none the wiser.
Definitely glad I dodged THAT bullet.
– fullalcoholiccircle
19. The Hot Day
I left a store and it soon became obvious something was wrong with the car – I pulled into the Walmart parking lot I was by and yep – flat tire on the front left side. My rather pregnant wife, and 3 year old daughter get out. It was HOT.
Got out the crappy scissor jack that came with the car and I was about to get started when my brother in law stopped to see if we needed anything – so I said maybe let them sit in your car while I change the tire.
I loosed the lug nuts, jack the car up, pull the lug nuts off, and tire is a little stuck. I lay down partially under the car to pull on the tire.
The next thing I hear is my brother in law shouting LOOK OUT – so I just roll away from the car and the very next thing I hear is crunching metal. The crappy jack had snapped in half, dropping the car all the way to the ground where my arm/shoulder had been like 1 second earlier.
No damage done to me, but I had to walk the adrenalin rush off for a few minutes after that. Fortunately we had triple A so they sent a guy to come fix it. The tow truck driver said he’d seen those jacks snap a bunch of times.
So if the only jack you have for your car is the crappy screw type jack – please buy a better one. PLEASE. I do not expect to come that close to getting injured and not have anything happen twice in one life time.
– ConsultantForLife
20. Blessing in Disguise
I got into a car accident that seriously f**ked me up.
During the initial scans to see how dented up I was from the accident they found a mass on my pancreas.
Turns out I have PNETS, endocrine tumors. It was just sitting there, getting bigger.
I took a bullet to dodge a bullet
– Rounder057
21. Fight or Flight
Me and my girlfriend at the time were traveling from New Zealand to my family back home in Sweden. We both decided to spend a bit more money to fly back (to NZ) through Paris instead of Amsterdam, just because we wanted to see the Eiffel Tower. It cost us maybe an extra $50 and we got to see it on the landing and then take off, but never actually set foot in Paris proper because we were poor students.
When we landed in Auckland, New Zealand, jetlagged to s**t, we turn on our phones and notice that we have about 50 missed calls from our travel agent, which was odd. When we call her, she sounds super relieved and out of breath. She tells us the flight she originally suggested to us, the one from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down over Ukraine.
My brain couldn’t process that information at the time, but once I woke up the next day it hit me like a ton of bricks. $50 made the difference between seeing the big steel thingy that has so many photos of it and bring sent to Sweden in body bags piece by piece.
Sometimes the absurdity of my existence comes over me, and this story always gives me goosebumps. One h**l of a story to tell over beers, though.
– Haxxer
22. Don’t Listen to Your Parents
I stayed out of the house overnight while in high school. My dad was p**sed off and told me that I better be home that night. I didn’t listen and instead stayed at a friends house with my girlfriend. At around 2 am a kid from high school drove a Denali into my house. It ran directly into my room and destroyed my room, bed and anything else around. He was estimated to be going around 60mph.
My dad is blind and thought that I may have been in the room. He was searching for me frantically my mother said. I remember getting a ton of phone calls from home knowing that I was going to get into trouble for staying out against my parents wished. The next day when my gf dropped me off at home, I found a massive wood board and tarp covering my room. I would definitely not be here today of I had stayed home that night. Best case scenario I’d be a paraplegic. I guess sometimes it does pay to not listen to your parents.
– yeahdude4930
23. Food for Thought
I’d planned on doing some grocery shopping one afternoon after running other errands in the morning. By the time I got done with my morning errands, the weather looked quite gloomy so I decided to leave the groceries for another day.
Just as I got home I got frantic texts from a friend of mine asking if I’m okay and to respond immediately. Apparently around the time I decided last minute to forgo shopping, someone opened fire at that exact grocery store I planned on going to.
If I remember correctly, fortunately nobody got hurt and the shooter got apprehended quite quickly.
– fl00fypanda
24. Loose Ends
Was coming back home from a night out.
Noticed my shoelace is undone, stop to tie it.
10 feet in front, exactly at the place I would have been if I haven’t stopped, a drunk guy from the first floor of an apartment building sits on his window, pulls his di*k out and starts pissing on the pavement.
Biggest “phew” I had in a while.
– wuxy95
25. Last Friday Night
Stealing this story from a friend. He lives in another country where alcohol use is frowned upon heavily, but it isn’t illegal. Having said that, there aren’t many “bars” or “clubs” or places like that for younger people to hang out at and drink – but there are a few.
Well, in my friend’s neighborhood, there was this one “bar” that he and his friend group went to pretty much every Friday night, without fail. For years they’d go every Friday. One Friday, his then girlfriend had a family event to go to, so they didn’t go. Since they weren’t going, the other friends decided not to go either. I think they went to someone’s house to hang out instead.
That night there was a terrorist attack on the bar. Dozens of people were killed. My friend and his friends were extremely lucky.
– AccusedOak04
26. Going Downtown?
I got out of school and I was about to take the bus, but decided to walk home since it was a nice day.
Turns out a couple of blocks later I saw the same bus surrounded by cop cars turns out someone pulled out a weapon and one of the passengers managed to restrain them.
– getsuga_tenshu
27. Love at First Sight
I went out with some friends to a bar, the bouncer kept flirting with me so I flirted back. He seemed funny and charming enough, so as I left the bar he ran out to ask for my number, which I gave him.
We texted for a bit and had plans to meet up for our first date….the day before this date he tells me that he loves me. Which throws me off completely, I then tell him that I do not love him. I don’t even know him. He says that is okay, but I have to admit that I have never felt this way about someone before…wtf??? No lol.
As the time nears to meeting him I just get this overwhelming anxiety and obviously just don’t want to go, but I felt bad about just canceling on some guy who seems to be nice, and other than the weird love outburst, has been really sweet to me through our limited interactions.
Cue detective work…after some intense searching, I find out this dude is a registered s** offender for attempted r**e by excessive force and violence. It even says that he has a high risk for repeating.
I am so glad I didn’t dismiss my feelings and decide to go on that first date, who knows what would have happened.
– Keishamarie4
28. Out Cold
I once went scuba diving with two friends to try a drysuit to dive in really cold water. As we entered the water it felt really cold. I thought everything was normal. Back than I had no reference for cold water and the feeling in a drysuit. The suit had a leak and was filling with water ( 1.5°C). After 15 minutes realised that the temperature wasn’t normal.
I signaled to my buddies that I need to get back. By that time the suit was halfway filled with water. It took us quite some time to get back to the coast. When I left the water I couldn’t move my hands and started to feel dizzy. My friends had to undress me because I almost fell unconscious. If I would have stayed longer I would have felt unconscious while still submerged.
Never underestimate the dangers of cold water. That stuff gets you quick
– Paulecut
29. The Bell
Back in HS my brother, a friend of his, and I attended a football game (it might’ve been the homecoming game; memory is a little fuzzy).
After the game my brother and I were craving Taco Bell and there was one a couple blocks away from our campus. My brother’s friend opposed the decision and told us that his dad was going to pick us up soon. We didn’t feel like walking home and we started thinking of how packed it might be at Taco Bell right after that game.
Not long after we get dropped off at home I turned on the tv to watch the “Friday Night Football highlights” on our local news station. The news instead is reporting on a shooting at the Taco Bell my brother and I wanted to go to after the game. It must’ve happened around the time we had gotten picked up. No one died but a few kids got seriously injured.
As far as I know they never found out who was responsible, but I do think about how different it could’ve turned out had we went.
– pradbitt87
30. Pain in the Neck
After having neck pain for my entire last year of school, I went out and got drunk one night and woke up unable to hold my head up without using my hand.
I went to the doctor who told me to get an X-ray and it turned out there was a tumour that had taken away 60% of my c3 vertebrae.
I had surgery and made a complete recovery, but if I’d had even a small fall a month later it would’ve been enough to kill me.
– PeppercornMedley
Enough to freak ya out a little, huh?
What bullet have you dodged in the past?
Tell us in the comments.
