“Just To Be Safe”: 30 Times People Had A Gut Feeling To Do Something And It Actually Saved Them
We probably all know the proverb 'better safe than sorry.' It's sometimes better to do something boring or difficult preemptively than take risks on what might happen later. These seemingly dull tasks might sometimes prove to be more important than we thought. At other times, they might even save someone's life.
One netizen was curious if other people had ever had such an experience. "What precautionary measure did you take, thinking 'just to be safe,' that unexpectedly ended up saving the day later on?" the Redditor asked. And the people delivered with all sorts of answers. From saving themselves from snow storms, taking out insurance just in time, or preventing car theft – check out the answers and upvote the ones you find the most riveting.
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Nurse here. Per usual, I was being overworked. I had over 9 patients in the ER. One patient had cancer and hadn't been feeling well. The doctor insisted he was fine. However, just to be safe I continued to regularly check in on him as he was chilling in a chair in the hallway. He started complaining of feeling super tired and off. His daughter (who also was a doctor) kind of said something along the lines of "you've had a stressful day dad. We will get you home once the doctor discharges you". Just to cover my a*s, I took his vitals. His blood pressure was 70s/40s.
I had a critical care room open and immediately rolled him in there, calling out to the doctor that something was wrong I could just feel it. The charge nurse got mad when I told her he needed that room (she didn't like that I was a travel nurse calling the shots, but I didn't care). Doctor felt I was overreacting but they repeated vitals and did a Stat scan. The guy was bleeding internally (I can't remember full details now) and they found Mets to his spinal cord. We were able to stabilize and ship him to a bigger hospital. That irritated ER doctor thanked me later, and said if that guy went home he most likely would have died that night. It felt really, really good.
All because I listened to my patient and my gut, and didn't let the stress of over 9 patients cloud my judgment.
Thank you so much for not letting the other people get in your way of making an impact with saving someone's life. This is one thing I don't get. Like I do, but at the same time. That someone life. But I know nurse and doctors have so much to deal with and extra. But I just glad it came out positive and everyone was okay.
I for some reason had the feeling that I was being watched, so I closed all the blinds and just let the dog out the back door instead of walking him.
My dog found the creep in my backyard, and dragged him by the pant leg out of a bush, thrashing him around. Based on the video the dog got at least 4 good bites in.
Imagine having this feeling all the time. I have that problem. Sometimes it goes away. But most time it there. I think it cause of childhood trauma at least that what I read. The only person I ever told about it was my husband.
As a manager, I noticed my team was getting saddled with harder work than the other teams. I informed my boss but she laughed at me and sent me packing. Since we tracked employee productivity by case worked I had a feeling I'd need some kind of proof in the future so I went back to my team, explained the situation and informed them I wanted them to keep daily logs of all of their cases and time stamp them even though the system did this automatically.
Fast forward two years. Another manager believes his employees are getting harder cases than the other teams, so he complains about it to my/his boss. His rapport with her is significant as he works the same shift, so she looks into it. After a three day secret investigation, I get one of the most aggressive and hateful emails of my career accusing me of cherry-picking millions of cases over years of work for my team. My response was to hand her daily logs from every employee for two years. 11000 sheets of paper, give or take. The absolutely incredulous look she gave me was worth it alone. "What's this?", that's 100% accurate daily logs of every employee and their cases worked. "Why do you have this?" To protect them from you when you inevitably did this.
Three days later I got my apology, turns out an employee was coming in early and scanning in my employees paperwork and tossing their cover sheets so there was no record they had done any of the difficult work. After running numbers, it was determined that the other manager was incorrect, and the evidence showed my team worked roughly 34% of difficult cases and accounted for 15% of the total workforce. The day shift employees all got into trouble for passing off hard cases.
The day I got to tell my team their logs literally saved all of our jobs was one of my best days at work, ever.
'Better safe than sorry' is what we call a precautionary principle. Even if we don't know if a certain thing will lead to harm, we should still take measures to prevent it. It is applicable in innovation, when evaluating environmental and health risks, or just in simple everyday life.
And just like everything else in life, it has its fans and critics. Especially amongst policymakers. Proponents claim that it can protect human health and the environment. Its critics say that it stunts innovation and is not based on scientific research.
For example, if a government is preparing to release a new medicine, it has to be thoroughly tested. So it can't be widely available from the get-go. But what if that new medicine could cure serious diseases? Shouldn't the government give it to all those who are in need? That's why sometimes the principle can be quite controversial.
I run a reptile and exotic animal rescue in South Texas. We are having very cold weather.
I drove out to the rescue to check on everyone ONE MORE TIME even though I'd been out there many times today.
The heat had stopped working. We ended up having to move all the reptiles to my house. They would have died tonight.
It's crowded as f**k but everyone is alive. The 90 pound tortoise in my living room is probably gonna f**k some stuff up, but he's alive.
Edit: typos
Edit 2 for photos of [critters and rescue](https://imgur.com/a/jdo4hO0) (Reminder that these are temporary emergency enclosures and as a rescue some animals are sick and/or injured).
Helped a victim of human trafficking get to a shelter.
Context: I was a medical student at the time and the city my school was in is a hub for human trafficking. I noticed a patient in the ER who had a pretty bad injury to her face was with a sketchy looking guy who was not related to her. She wasn't my patient, but I brought my gut feeling up to her doctor who then made up some excuse to talk to the patient alone and got her to help. I never talked to her myself, but I couldn't shake the vibe I got from looking at her and the man she was with.
Bought a tool for my car that is a combination glass breaker and seat belt cutter. Six months later, an EMT used it to cut me out of my car.
Now I buy them for everyone I know.
Our need to better be safe than sorry can also explain anxiety disorders. Psychiatrist Randolph Nesse uses the smoke detector theory to link the two together. This way, he explains why people are having panic attacks in situations where they are quite safe.
"I started realizing that it's essential for alarms to go off," professor emeritus at the University Of Michigan said. "Even if there's just a chance of danger. When the threat is uncertain, false alarms are worth it." It’s better to be safe than sorry. "We want to ensure we get warned about every single fire."
So anxiety acts as a defense mechanism of sorts. When we feel we might be in some kind of danger, our brains tell us that it's better to be safe than sorry and ring that panic attack alarm. "If there's a lot of danger lurking outside, it’s essential to your survival to have anxiety every time you leave the house, so you can be more hypervigilant and prepared to protect yourself," psychiatrist Joanna Cheek adds.
I was scheduled for a mammography when I got 50. Somehow, it didn't work out that year, because the appointment was in Bavaria but I live in Düsseldorf. And I also thought it was not that important. But a year later, they sent me the invitation again.
I scheduled a mammography in Bavaria then, as I was visiting my parents anyway, and I thought, well, they probably aren't going to find anything, but if I have cancer and didn't have that mammography, I'm going to regret it. I expected a letter telling me that they had found nothing. But in fact, they did find something that needed further investigation. Turned out to be slow-growing breast cancer. One year earlier, it would not have been there yet. And one year later, it would have been much larger and possibly needed chemo as well as the surgery.
But as it was, they could just cut it out, and that was that.
Bought a generator 15 years ago because a hurricane was forecast. Drove 3 hours to get it. Didn’t lose power that month. Hubby rolled his eyes. Two months later, the “October” storm hit, dumped 20 inches of snow, state lost power, we lost power for 13 days. We had the wood stove and the generator, well, some lights, stove and fridge.
I wfh. I take screenshots of what my managers say in Teams. One manager said one thing, another tried to say it never happened. I produced the screenshot.
But is the 'better safe than sorry' rule always true? While all the entries on this list confirm the proverb, it doesn't quite work in all scenarios. Leadership coach Sylvia Lafair writes that it might not be so helpful in your career. The 'better safe than sorry' philosophy might hold you back from potential opportunities and greater career heights.
A Philadelphia-based recruiter, Kenneth L. Johnson, reiterates this claim. "Many of those ready for job placement hold back. They are afraid to take a risk. They claim it's better to be a generalist, to be safe rather than sorry. These folks may be passionate about their vertical talents, yet they hold back."
I got life insurance on my husband during open enrollment and we joked. “haha I’ll be a rich widow ha ha” totally joking because we have never had any policies on either of us. He got sick and passed away 2 months later. The money saved my butt and I tell everyone to get life insurance. It’s so very important.
Slept with bedroom door open the other day; we almost never do that, and honestly it was because I wanted to be able to hear for some reason. Smelled gas at midnight, turns out my daughter had turned the stove nob just a touch before going to bed 5hrs earlier. That was a scary one.
Used to have a ground floor apartment and a motion sensor camera on my patio connected to my phone. My friends and I got home ~ 4AM from being out all night and we’re chilln in the living room. Motion detected on the back patio. I dismiss it since it’s normally a stray cat or leaves blowing.
A few minutes later I decided to check out the motion recording just to see. It was a man that hopped my patio and was peeking at us through the slits in the blinds. I went to live view to see if he was still there, and he was.
I start going ballistic screaming and about to fight this guy. I’m storming to my patio door but he fled by then. Glad I checked the camera.
Not stopping: About 20 years ago I almost stopped to help a stranded motorist, saw a highway patrol behind me and knew he would stop. That night on the news I saw that he did stop and a shootout ensued after the officer noticed the ignition wire had been pulled from the distributor. The "stranded" motorist was an escaped prisoner looking for another car to steal.
Out of nowhere I decided to boil a ton of water for my son’s formula. My husband made fun of me for boiling gallons of water to store in several giant pots but then he took over the project. The next day a freak winter storm hit Texas. We lost power for a week and water for a week and a half. Because we were still in survival mode we had zero clue this storm was coming. We didn’t have much food for ourselves. But our baby boy was well fed during the storm.
I did worry about running out of formula and trekking through snow but thankfully we had also bought cans of formula a few days before the storm on a whim.
In the Reddit post, they explain that they were following hospital instructions. So I’m guessing their doctor knew best regarding formula and water supply. Edit to add: and the point is more that because they boiled and stored it, they had water to make the formula whereas otherwise they wouldn’t have had any water, sterilized or not.
This is a super mundane example but very useful to remember. Every time I'm in an airport, I take photos of my bags before checking them in.
So this one time they lose my bag and I'm sitting at the help desk and they say something like "Can you describe it? Does it have any identifying features?" and I was able to just bust out the photos. They found my bag very quickly.
Shared this story with people at a conference and now every year they all tell me they take photos of their bags, and every now and then it saves someone's a*s. On a similar note, also taking photos of room numbers and building locations.
Not me but my parents…
I was probably an early teen and my parents were leaving to go run an errand but it was kind of early about 8 or 9am so I didn’t want to go and asked to stay home.
My Dad agreed and came to ask me again and I said I wanted to stay. They ended up leaving but turned back around and my dad said, they didn’t want me staying home and I better just get up and go. After some whining I agreed to go.
I think we were gone maybe 20min when they got a call from the police that our alarm system went off and our house had been burglarized by two guys.
The police was able to get one of them but the other one got away.
Who knows in what situation I would have been in had I stayed home.
I was in the army and distant for awhile. See my grandfather after a few years. Despite my bad tendancies then, something told me to stay sober that day. Grandpa is very slow and distracted. After they leave i ask my dad how long hed been like that. "Like what? I thought he was just tired" I told him to call my grandmother and i yell NOW. Grandma takes Grandpa to hospital. Brain bleed. Doc says Gramps most likely would have died in his sleep that night. Had i drank i wouldve missed it. Edit: i was a medic, which is why i was able to catch it. And also why i drank alot. I also want to say i yelled because my dad is, despite being very intelligent, is functionally useless in a crisis and needs to be directed as such.
Randomly went with my friend to buy her new car, just needed to get out of the house. Convinced her to buy GAP insurance cause it was cheap and I wish I had gotten it for peace of mind. Her car got stolen and it instead of being stuck with the loan the insurance paid out (after 30 days or whatever) and she got another car.
Always get Gap insurance if you can afford it. If your car gets totaled, you’ll have to pay for the rest of the loan that the insurance doesn’t pay. And insurance never pays replacement costs for a car
Was coming home from sledding when I was a wee 6 years old. Just me and my dad, in the old Ford Explorer. Before we left the park, we had an argument about wearing my seatbelt (I think it was because I was bundled up and chunky, and did not want the added sensory discomfort of being strapped in to the passenger seat. Dad wins, I wear the seatbelt.
He forgets to put his on.
About a mile from our humble farmhouse, he’s going decently slow because the roads are slick, we hit ice and spun out anyways. We run right into the tree line through a barbed wire fence, and smack into a tree head-on pretty hard. Because my dad was not wearing his seatbelt, he ended up on my side of the car, head smashed into the windshield, blood EVERYWHERE.
Luckily, an older couple were driving down our relatively quiet country road and stopped to help. They drove my poor little traumatized self down the road to our house and took dad to the ER. He was thankfully fine, just needed stitches, maybe a mild concussion. I think my dad still had glass coming out from his scalp like 5 years after that, though.
Glad he was a persistent, good father and made me put my seatbelt on.
Brought my get home bag with me on a drive and my car ended up crapping out on me leaving me stranded. After evaluating my options and taking a good hard look at the situation I decided to grab my bag and walk the rest of the way home. Ended up having to keep myself fed and watered as I walked and that bag really ended up being a real life saver.
Yes this is so important I can not stress this enough. Aways have a blanket, flash light, food, water, tools, a strobe light, matches or something to start a fire. Change of cloths. And a weapon of some sort. Best bet if you can put a gun in there. All of this is incase your car dose break down. That way if no one can pick you up or your out in another state or anything you can survive. And plus it will be a lot easier on you.
When I remodeled the second floor apartment I installed fire blocking to the balloon framed walls. My dips**t brother in law started a grease fire in the downstairs kitchen while I was on vacation and the fire was contained quickly. The fire inspector said that without the fire blocking the house would have been a smoldering hole in the ground.
I once was asked if I could give someone a ride home from a local convenience store. Normally I would say so, but I decided to be nice that day. They were a lady in their mid 30s or early 40s so I figured it wasn’t that big a deal. For whatever reason, I subconsciously mentioned that I wasn’t able to buy what I went in to the store for because I forgot my wallet at home. The person says “You don’t have your wallet on you?”
I say “Nah.”
They look a little concerned, and a few moments later say they can walk to their destination just fine. Thought it was weird but didn’t think too hard about it.
Next day it’s on the news that a armed robbery took place in the exact location she asked me to take her to, and gave a description that 100% matched the person I was going to take home.
Didn’t really save myself as I had nothing to steal, but an interesting story.
Except your life. They could have stolen that. Do ya'll know who Greg Allman, of the Allman Brothers Band is? They play a song called "Melissa", sometimes mistakenly callled "Sweet Melissa"? He's an old school musician, okay? Look him up. He's in the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame. One of the Greats, along with his brother. Anyway. Greg Allman's father was trying to help someone around the Christmas Holidays, and he gave this guy a ride, on his way home from work.The guy returned the favor by robbing and killing Mr. Allman. He was in the service and I guess he fought back, and the guy shot and killed him. Greg was just 2 years old at the time, and his brother Duane was only 3. Most people probably don't know that story. But, I got curious one day and found that on Wikipedia. Two little boys lost their father, when a hitchhiker robbed him of his life. I'm really glad you listened to your intuition that day.
TLDR: My paranoia about a strange guy in a car kept my house from flooding.
We had a house fire Oct 2021 and we were bouncing back and forth between our house and a rental. Christmas Eve was extra cold and our pipes were frozen in our house (1894, no insulation yet). So we decided to go to the rental for Christmas Eve.
My wife and daughter were taking 1 car and I was taking the other. When I left the house I saw a man sitting in his car across the street messing on his phone. Given the cold weather it seemed odd. When my wife left, the man pulled his car across the street to the spot she just left (this is a one way street). Since I'm further back, I watch for a bit, but he doesn't do anything, just gets back on his phone.
Eventually my wife calls and asks where I am, because she didn't bring her keys for the rental. I drove over and let her in and tell her about the guy. She encourages me to go back and point one of our security cameras his direction just in case.
When I get back he's still there, so I go inside. Once I'm inside I hear water running. In the 30 minutes I was gone the water started running again.
In the back kitchen where the fire had been, the faucet was still on and was flooding the room. I shut that off and went downstairs to check the cellar under the kitchen for water leakage. In the cellar was a cracked copper pipe spraying water across the room. So I shut off the water and cleaned up the kitchen before the damage could cause permanent problems.
When I left, the guys car was still there, but he was gone. I think he was meeting a neighbor for Christmas Eve dinner. But, if he hadn't been there, the house would have been flooding for who knows how long.
My son had graduated college and then decided to follow his girlfriend to a small town where she got her dream job. It was a small town and good jobs were hard to come by so almost a year went by with him only working part time jobs. He had hit the age where we could not have him on our medical insurance anymore . I was concerned about this and started looing into options and told him to apply to our states low income medical. For once he listened and I thank God everyday because not a month after being approved he started to have leg pain. The first two trips to the Dr. they wrote it off as a pulled muscle but the third time they ordered test to find out he had a blood clot that stretched from his lower calf up into his abdomen. Placed him right into the hospital but remember small town, did not have the expertise to take care of this 50 mile ambulance ride to bigger hospital lots of tests to find out why and a total of over $120,000 of charges when all was said and done in which he had to pay less then $20. He is good now but it did damage the vein in his leg and he had pain from it and will have to be on blood thinners the rest of his life.
I know the pain, went through it with blood clots in the lungs, and now on blood thinners for the rest of my life too, and just started having the same pain back again {Dr told me the pain is the same lv as a woman giving birth!, I'm male so wow... Im so sorry for that pain ladies!} going for a mri/scan in a week or so
Closing the curtains.
I’m sitting in my living room watching Frasier, and I can’t explain it, but I get this overwhelming feeling to close the curtains. I’m thinking to myself I’ve lost it, and it’s probably nothing.
It nags me the rest of the episode, and so I close them.
Turns out, there was a guy who would look into people’s windows to see if they lived alone. He would then SA and rob them. He hit my next door neighbor at the time.
🥺 I will make shore all my curtains are shut now. I do all the time anyway though.
Get an old box or a backpack and fill it with an extra set of old clothes (including shoes/socks/tshirt/pants), a simple first aid kit, a flashlight, some water and a roll of toilet paper. Put it in the trunk of your car. I guarantee that you will use it one day.
If you want to be even smarter, add one of those shiny emergency blankets, a whistle, duct tape and multi tool. It doesn't take up much space.
I just recently used the pants, the socks, multi tool and water at a tailgate party. The toilet paper was used several times through the years (I'm a hero for that one)
You never know!
Edit: lots of great additions to this post in comments below. I keep both a waterproof backpack AND a small box of stuff- including many of the other things mentioned. It's not from paranoia, I'm just an old Boy Scout who hates getting caught with no clean pants to wear. Be Prepared...and at least have some basics! Safe travels everyone!
I can not stress enough how important this is. If not for anything else for comfort. But mostly just incase anything happens. You will be prepared.
Threw a flashlight in my pocket when going for a day hike. We got lost in mountain lion territory and took over an hour in the dark to get out once we found the trail again. And we could hear some animal near us the whole time hiking out in the dark. Scared the bejeepers out of me, but the flashlight made it infinitely better than it could have been.
When I booked plane tickets for my honeymoon, I put my maiden last name rather than what I would be changing my last name to. Saved the day because my ex-fiance cheated and I called off the wedding. Had that plane ticket been with the last name I never took… I probably wouldn’t have been able to get the voucher from the airline. It was hard enough getting them to give me one with my real last name.
Was buying a cash bag to put in my backpack. One was water proof and the other one was not. I thought “I can’t imagine why I would need it to be water proof but better safe than sorry I guess.” Like 2 days later a Dr Pepper explodes in my backpack.
I have a travel handbag (Billabong) that is waterproof. Thank goodness because I dropped it once at the beach in Umhlanga and my phone didn't get wet at all.
Bringing an umbrella. Both for rain and for too much sun on a hot day.
Note: this post originally had 66 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
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Was really sick one January and throwing up so much I had severe pain in my right abdomen. Wife thought it was my appendix and called an ambulance. At the hospital they did a ct scan and found my appendix was fine but I also had a lump on my left kidney. Had it removed to be safe and found out it was cancer in the early stages.
Our old dishwasher broke down. Together with my husband we decided we would get one at a nearby 1kea on a given day. That given day he had lots of work meetings and I had class that lasted a bit longer so it was later than the time we agreed to go. We still tried and then we saw a big traffic jam on the highway, decided to go back home, eat dinner and try other day. Turns out that there was a big accident with several cars being on fire and some people got seriously wounded. If we had gotten out on the time we planned we would have been involved.
I was hanging at a popular mudding/offroad spot in the woods with my buddy and his old pick-up. I was feeling uneasy all day and decided to leave early. Side note, his pick-up didn't have working seat belts. Sure enough, later that night he and another person were jack knifed, flipped the truck, and were ejected. I would have been the 3rd victim if I didn't heed my odd feeling. Both occupant and driver lived but with a long bit of recovery ahead of them.
Was really sick one January and throwing up so much I had severe pain in my right abdomen. Wife thought it was my appendix and called an ambulance. At the hospital they did a ct scan and found my appendix was fine but I also had a lump on my left kidney. Had it removed to be safe and found out it was cancer in the early stages.
Our old dishwasher broke down. Together with my husband we decided we would get one at a nearby 1kea on a given day. That given day he had lots of work meetings and I had class that lasted a bit longer so it was later than the time we agreed to go. We still tried and then we saw a big traffic jam on the highway, decided to go back home, eat dinner and try other day. Turns out that there was a big accident with several cars being on fire and some people got seriously wounded. If we had gotten out on the time we planned we would have been involved.
I was hanging at a popular mudding/offroad spot in the woods with my buddy and his old pick-up. I was feeling uneasy all day and decided to leave early. Side note, his pick-up didn't have working seat belts. Sure enough, later that night he and another person were jack knifed, flipped the truck, and were ejected. I would have been the 3rd victim if I didn't heed my odd feeling. Both occupant and driver lived but with a long bit of recovery ahead of them.
