What's your closest call you walked away from?

[GTX]

I'm not trying to be morbid at all but the up and walking post got me thinking of how many accidents I've had and walked away from or at least I'm still here and how lucky I am. That is so cool that someone is able to get back to a normal life and be walking. That is something that few of us really think of how lucky we are to be able to do.

How many of you have had really hairy close calls ending in actual impact and walked away or came out ok in the end?  I'm sure there are a number of you just by the nature of our hobby. The thrill seeker personality is in probably all of us.

I have a few but I'll wait and see what you guys have to say.

I really would like to hear some of the tales.

[Todd Wilson]

Years ago I was switching rail cars at a local elevator and was riding the shove (pushing cars).   One of our local junk haulers pulled up and sat there a while as we were coming down the track. At the last possible second he pulls out in front of me. I was riding on the side ladder and as I was about to bail off his car trailer swung around and took out the ladder I was on.   Lucky for me this grain car had a floor on the end of the car and I hopped in there out of the way. The truck and trailer was wrapped around the end of the car. I was a sitting duck. Rat in a cage with no where to go   and a oxy/act torch on the truck was with reach of me the whole time. Took a few seconds to come to a stop.   If I had stayed on the ladder (per rules) I woulda got smoked and if I had jumped I woulda got smoked. Being where I was isnt the place you are supposed to be according to the rules but thats another store. It saved my ass!






Another story happend when I was younger in high school Didnt realize it at the time but in later years looking back we were lucky...............
My buddy had a 73 Charger and we and 2 chicks and some beer and blankets were going to the lake.     Running down the 2 lane road going over 100mph for a long time. Wind blowing in music up chicks by our side...........we slow down and turn onto the side road and maybe 1/4 of a mile my buddy stops and gets out and lets his chick drive. We start down the dirt road going slow and the Charger suddenly turns to the right. There happens to be a concrete culvert there and we get to a stop and the Charger is teetered back and forth   almost ready to go on over. About a 10 foot drop but we would have landed on our lid.   We all slide to the drivers side and get the funk out of the Charger.     Find some fallen tree's (its by a lake) and proper the Charger up so its not going to tip over and off.     A few days before this he had some front end work done. They forgot to put a pin back in and the tie rod came loose and the steering came apart.   If it had happend a few minutes before it did     we'd been dead and half way to hell before we got stopped!


Todd

[Ghoste]

I've had a bunch of accidents (none for many many years but...) and the worst one had to be one morning driving into school and when I pulled out to pass a guy, he came over NASCAR style and just ran me off the road into the ditch.  The car went through the ditch a ways and then slid up the opposite bank about 5 foot from a concrete culvert.  That wasn't the end of my adventure though as this sent me flying down a hillside and into a cherry orchard.  I managed to somehow avoid the trees until the car slowed down enough that when it did finally head on a tree, I wasn't killed.  It did total the car though.

The most frightening didn't involve impact.  I was driving a gravel road one night in the fog and came to a railroad track that crossed the road at a 45 degree angle.  I stopped for the tracks and looked and saw nothing coming.  I did notice the yard light at the next farmhouse though and as I proceeded across the tracks, the "yard light" came thundering by just off my rear bumper.  I stopped the car, got out and threw up at the side of the road.  I was shaking so bad it was several minutes before I could get back in and drive.  Never been that scared since.

[Charger_Fan]

I haven't had many actual impacts...I usually always steer clear. :knock-on-wood:
Now...close calls...ummm, yeah I've had quite a few.


The worst actual impact I have had was in my Charger. My shoulder still hurts sometimes, 12 years later.

[Silver R/T]

cool stories, keep em coming in

[Chryco Psycho]

I had a van virtually rolled , it was so far over it scraped up the trim rings on the wheels , got it back & kept on driving , , never paniced or hit the brakes , never even lifted on the throttle

[derailed]

I was in a bad car accident when I was about 6 or so. Got rearended hard by a truck. I was with my mom in a 71 Toyota Corona waiting to make a left turn. I think if it werent for her having the wheels turned to the left waiting to turn which your not suppose to do it would have been alot worse. Luckly there was no one coming at us. Another time was when I had a severe alergic reaction to multiple bee stings when I was about 9 and got rushed to the emergency room unable to breath. Ive been stung a shitload of times since and it never happened again.

[NHCharger]

Was out drinking with two buddies when I was 18. We were in Gary's Z-28. He took a corner in a 35 MPH zone at 85. As we spun out of control I remembering buckling my seat beat. We slid sideways up an embankment, just past the top was several large trees. My side was about to impact the trees when somehow the undercarriage got hung up on the top of the embankment. We rode along the top of the embankment and then spun back down into the road. Ended up with a bent frame.

[chrisII]

Todd's post reminds me of 2 close calls ive had. first one, im like 18 had a nuts gf at the time who got mad at me and decides to start kicking the dash of my Charger. of corse i reach over to try to grabb her feet (DUGH THIS IS A CHARGER!!) got into the wide shoulder and slid off the end of like an 8 foot culvert. the only damage to the car was a crack in the MINT dash pad from the dumb beotch kicking. had to have it towed out but drove it away. had i slid off 2 feet either way i would have wrecked the car. if only i had had the brains to dump her for that   

    next one, i had a 79 aspen that mom n dad bought new. (this is like 94?) L6 and verry high gears. drove it out to my grandparrents farm, and on leaving decided to run it up to  110+. drove into town (3 miles) turned right to park across the street from my appartment and the right side wheel never came back straight, the tie rod had just fallen appart! never noticed it shake like they normaly do or any warning of any kind. if that had fallen off at 110 i would prolly have bought it that day. guess ma mopar was watchin out for me that day.

[71bee]

I had a '73 Chebby Blazer all jacked up with 35's. never could get the front driveline to work for me. one day (I believe it was around Feb.) I was going a bit to fast down an icey road. lost control (yeah, the front driveline was in the shop) I slid about 50 ft. on freakin' black ice, spun around a few times then slammed hard into a telephone pole just right behind the drivers door, thus lodging the truck pretty much "pretzel like."   I would've seen stars for shure if it would've been just a little bit further forward. pissed me off! spilled my coffee everywhere....other than that, just a few close ones with Diabetic issues.

[GTX]

Ok, we went from SLC, Utah to San Diego to buy my Benz. We got down to San Diego and the car turned out to be umm.. less than described. We had some back up cars to look at but finally ended up finding one up North across the street from Disneyland

We bought the car and after staying overnight began our drive home. We got to just about 5 miles outside of Las Vegas.
I was driving the Benz in front and my gf was following me in the T bird.  Well some girl in the oncoming lane had missed her exit and decided that making a U turn in the freeway at high speed would work for her. Well, she was going around 70 mph when she pulled off the freeway and she lost control of her car.
She went down in the gully between the Northbound and Southbound lanes. It all happened so fast that all I heard was a call on the walkie talkies we were using asking me if I saw that dust. I looked just in time to see her bounce up onto my lane and head right in my path. I was doing about 70 mph and I knew I couldn't hit the brakes too hard without going into a spin but she was right in front of me and I mean close! There was no time to react.

This is where it got weird. Time slowed way,way down and things almost got frame by frame but I was still thinking at 1000 mph.
I turned slightly to the left hoping to avoid hitting her T bone style. The last thing I remember seeing was her gas door and I envisioned a neato explosion and my gf watching me die right there.
Apparently the girl hit the gas or something because we never made impact. People said that I disappeared into a cloud of dust with her in the middle. I apparently just passed behind her car and went off the road , through the air Dukes style and landed in the gully.

My momentum almost carried me back up into the other lane just as she had rolled into mine. I managed to keep the car in the gully and came to a stop.

I hit my right knee pretty hard on the dash when I came down on the ground and the seat belt left a nasty bruise on the shoulder but thank God I was wearing it.  I would have been through the glass otherwise.

Well, Nevada Highway Patrol rolls up and one of the cops comes up to me and informs me insurance fraud is a serious thing in Nevada and I need to make sure of what I was saying.
I said, yea, I go to California to buy Mercedes cars and drive them into people at 70mph along the way home and if I live through the accident then I sue them.

We spent the next day holed up in a hotel in pain and I drove the car home to Utah fueled by percocet.

Her insurance payed for almost 5k of repairs to my car. None in body work at all, it was all in the undercarriage. Exhaust and suspension etc.

[71bee]

 ......

[Chargen69]

My grandmother had a truck clip her front right corner of her 92 olds cutlass causing her to slide sideways and then flip and slide down the street for a long way.  walked away at 80 years old with bruises

[Brock Samson]

In the late '70s while returning home one night from a Oakland Seals Hockey game in a horrendous rain storm in the back seat of a '65 Mustang, after just exiting the tunnel at the beginning of the Oakland Bay Bridge the mustang flooded and we were stopped in the number 5 of six lanes.
    The driver and my dad were in the front seats and the driver's son was next to me in back,.. well of course some of us in back wanted to get out of the car but we couldn't because my dad and the driver said we would get hit by the cars rushing by... seatbelts were fastened flashers on...     
Well, it only took about a minute before we were rear-ended by a bathtub Porsche doing approx 50 MPH,.. then five cars crashed into it...
  Inside the mustang the trunk and hood popped open and doors were jammed shut around us so we never saw a thing but the sound was astounding!  
  We lived without any serious injuries! (thank you GOD!) but not everyone else who plowed into us was as lucky.. there were lots of really serious injuries in the following cars... 
    Of course we were scared the mustang was gonna explode since the rear end was about tree feet shorter then stock..
  and we cound't exit the car, and we tried the windows which were all shattered but the car was so tight we couldn't do anything.. except listen as car after car plowed into the wreak and shoved us further along.
  The CHP finally arrived which took about the longest ten minutes I've ever experienced.
    It took awhile for them to get us out once they found out we were uninjured as there hands were busy with the seriously injured folks, we were told the occupants of the Porsche were really bad off having been hit from behind by a truck behind as well as hitting us without any brakes,..
One thing our driver did that may have saved us was to put the car in N and release all the brakes so we got pushed along every time a car crashed and as i remember we traveled about 30 feet from the initial impact point..
  The CHP pretty much left us alone and we simply got towed off the bridge,.. but the cars and trucks were stacked up at the first bridge off-ramp and we could see the damage to the other cars including just how "Blessed" we were to all walk away.   as the mustang was folded up in the middle.


    
 

[Todd Wilson]

Won of my ex's is a redhead, does that count?
Mark

Yes it does!


Todd

[Charger_Croatia]

About 8 years ago my wife graduated and I went to celebrate that with her (she was studying in other town 250 miles far). I had my car just our of service shop with new tires, new brakes, aligned front end (it was one midsize European model front wheel drive). Road was familiar as I drove that way at least once a month. But I didn't have luck with weather, raining all the time. In one mild curve (speed was 60 mph, at least 15 mph bellow risky point) suddenly I noticed that I'm loosing rear tires grip. What can you do with front drive car when back or your car is began to slide...I tried to keep car on the road, braking was out of the question (no ABS). At the certain point I thought that I'll manage but then I felt like catapulted to the left side of the road. Beside dad feeling being crashed I was OK. Later on I found out that there was a diesel fuel on the road, probably from one of the trucks after refuelling on the gas station two miles further.
And what was the most important, I hit only possible safe place on that part of the road.

[4402tuff4u]

Not a car related "walk away from" story, but I think important enough for me to mention.
During my high school years I worked in a ice cream parlour to save money for college. One night I was the only one working that day. I was held up at gun point - gun held to my head for about two minutes while they looked for money. They did'nt find much so they were kind of pissed off. Then they took me to the rear of the store and they told me to lay down on the floor and face down. They were whispering things I could'nt hear. I thought it was over at that point. I was more worried about my parents suffering if I was going to get killed. At one point I was ready to take the guy with the gun because he was about my height and weight and I knew I could take him. I was in very good shape being in the ice hockey and lacrosse team I knew I could slam the guy down and lock him in a arm lock and suffocate the life out of him, but something told me not to. Anyway they left after that and I called the cops.  
"Knock on wood" never been in a bad car accident as other members here.

[2Gunz]

Airbourne in a Nissian Stanza at 124 MPH.

When I was a kid my friend and I took my grandmas car out to see how fast it would go. It was a 5 speed and 5 gear is REALLY tall in that car.
Once we got to 5th it was still gaining speed but very slowly. Which is also how I know exactly how fast I was going, I was counting every tick.

We where on an old country road that I knew really well. However because it was taking so long to gain speed we had driven into an area that I didnt know as well. Anyway.....  We hit a bump in the road that set us into the air.  We went into the air and flew a long ways, however it wasnt very high. 4 feet I would say tops.  That few seconds seemed like forever, we had a short conversation. My friend said something along the lines of "oh Shit dude this is going to hurt" with me replying,  "um... ya".  We landed and the car hit with a thud and fish tailed a bit, but I got it back under contol. No damage to the car but Im sure the shocks and muffler didnt like me much.

Good times.

[NYCMille]

Sept. 11th 2001 - I can assure you though there was no walking involved - was down at the Trade Centers at work... ya'll kinda know the rest of the story... 

[andy74]

when i was 12  i was riding my bike home from the communiy pool,and got hit by a car from behind,guy was going about 50 miles an hour.i was thrown across the street,bounced off the pavement a few times,and made out with just a buch of road rash,and stitches in both legs,and my head! 2 days latter a kid i knew was riding his bike,from he same place,but going the opposite way and was hit by a train and killed,tough summer

[GTX]

I was out on my little Honda Intercepter one night in the late 80's and on my way home I had an adventure.

I was cruising Northbound on Highland drive just past the Villa for you locals and a car came up from a side street coming sort of fast.

I wasn't sure if he was going to stop so I slowed down and flashed my highbeam. He slowed and I began speeding up again.
The guy sort of rolled forward so I hit the brakes and waited for him to go but he didn't so I sped up again. Well, I accelerated to about 45mph and he jackrabbited right out in front of me.
I knew that if I layed the bike down I'd go under the moving car but I didn't nearly have time to go around him.  Everything happened so fast it was all over in a second. I remember thinking right before I hit ' This one is gonna really hurt' and ' This one might be THE one ( that kills me)' 
Several of my friends had been hit already and a few died. I myself had been hit one month earlier on my other bike.

I hit him right behind the passenger door and I remember a loud dull thud and then I was flying.....
It was sort of cool really for a split second. I was up and over his car but then I began rolling forward while in the air. My head rolled forward and as I rolled I looked between my legs and saw my bike flipping over the car too and I thought that was cool but then I saw the ground come up..fast and hard!
I hit in a semi sitting position and immediatly flipped back and hit the back of my helmet cracking the helmet and then I flipped forward and hit my face cracking the chin guard part. That could have been my face and teeth!
I started to roll and flip down the street at about 40mph and I made a huge mistake. I put out my arm to try to stop the roll and I tore up my shoulder joint pretty bad. I was wearing leathers so only minimal road rash though.
At some point in the crash I broke my leg too but it didn't hurt until I got to the hospital and everything began to set in..
I began spinning as I slid down the road. As I was facing forward I could see headlights coming at me and as I spun around backwards I saw my bike laying on it's side also spinning and gaining on me.
A car almost hit me because they didn't see me in the street, the only reason they stopped was because they saw a flashing white and red light in the road which was my bike flashing the headlight and then tail light as it spun.
Well, the guy took off fast and kept going so he never knew if I was dead or alive.

I came to a stop in the oncoming traffic lane gutter about 120' away. There happened to be a cop checking buildings a few doors down and she came right over after hearing the thud. She had a cell phone and called my gf to tell her I was down ...again.

Guys, it's not easy on our women getting calls from the police at night telling them that you are in a motorcycle accident and laying in the street.
   
I ended up with a totalled bike, a serious concussion, broken leg, sprained shoulder, sprained back and neck and they think that might be when I really messed up my hip but I lived!! The only real ongoing problem is that I still have hip trouble and between this accident and the one that happened a month earlier in which I wasn't wearing a helmet  I can't remember blocks of time in the mid to late 80's and into the early 90's up to about '93  but maybe that's not a bad thing.
Still have some short term problems too.   


I no longer ride bikes
I rode for 15 years on the street with no troubles and then got hit twice in one month.
Sorry for such a long story.

[Charger_Fan]

Sept. 11th 2001 - I can assure you though there was no walking involved - was down at the Trade Centers at work... ya'll kinda know the rest of the story...  

Holy crap, Man! You were in one of the towers that day?

The only time I've laid my bike down was when someone cut me off one morning on the way to work. I was in the right lane on a city street & some white car speeds past me in the lane to my left, then decides he needs to make a right on the approaching street to my right.
At about 40 mph, he crossed right in front of me & almost clipped my front tire. Normally it wouldn't have been a big deal, but that time as I hit the binders, I noticed too late that there was light gravel under my tires. I hit the ground in .0002 seconds! I've never been thrown down that fast in my life! Me & the bike went spinning down the street, as other cars dodged us both.
I was up & running after my bike before it stopped sliding. It was still idling in gear. I picked it up, brushed myself off & rode the rest of the way to work...minus half the clutch lever, left mirror & left footpeg.

The car that caused it kept going & so did all the other cars around me, so I figured it pointless to wait for cops. My insurance paid for the damages anyway.

[HAZZARDJOHN]

When I was about 17, I had the car pictured below. I worked at Valvoline changing oil at the time. I don’t remember any of this so I am just going form what the Eye witness’ said. I brought my car into check something, I don’t know what. This is my last memory of before the accident. Apparently I handed my Buddy and Co-worker my keys. And then I jumped on the hood to ride around the parking lot goofing around. He says he was slowly swerving back and forth to jokingly make me think he was trying to knock me off the hood. I can see this happening ‘cause before this we would do stuff like that for a good time, we were Young and dumb. What’s different today? I’m older now!   I guess I fell off at the last minute and landed on my head. Everybody there says I walked inside the building myself.   But I can’t recall. I vaguely remember people saying to me, Are you sure your alright, maybe he should go to the hospital. The next memory is me riding in my friends Trans am to the hospital and him stating to me “isn’t it cool to be riding in a Tran am?” He says I yelled at him for that and said I have tunnel vision. I could care less about your car! ( tunnel vision by the way is the freakiest thing I can remember.) I get to the hospital, and they injected me with some good drugs, and gave me a CAT scan. I was in the hospital under watch for 5 days, meaning they would wake me up every half an hour. That sucked! I have a little bit of brain damage, but it is nothing serious. The weirdest part was when I got home from the hospital, My mother bought me Mcdonald’s, since I have barely eat all that crappy hospital food. Well after that day French fries literally tasted like butter, Gross! Not many food Items tasted the same to me. I have a whole new set of foods that I will eat. Fries have gotten better but they still don’t taste as good as they use to. I have learned a lot from this situation, I seriously could have ended up a vegetable, or even Dead. I learned to cherish every moment God gives you. I learned to not sweat the small stuff. Spend my days surrounded by the people that I love. I thank God everyday for waking me up! Apparently I needed a real knock in the a$$ to get that message!

Have a great day!
~HJ

Tha car that tried to kill me!

[TruckDriver]

Sept. 11th 2001 - I can assure you though there was no walking involved - was down at the Trade Centers at work... ya'll kinda know the rest of the story...  

Holy crap, Man! You were in one of the towers that day?

[Andrew]

Tha car that tried to kill me!

I think I see why