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Call it fate, call it good or bad luck, call it divine timing, call it a glitch in the matrix. Whatever it is, sometimes people end up in situations completely out of their control, where simply being in a certain place at a certain time can change everything. Sometimes it works out. Sometimes it really doesn’t.
One Redditor asked people who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, but managed to get out before disaster hit, to share what happened. Read their stories below, and let us know in the comments if you think it was sheer coincidence or something more.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Was in Branson last week on vacation with my wife, had a thought about riding a Duck boat on Thursday. Decided to play mini golf instead. The boat capsized, [ending] 17 people, 9 from one family.
RELATED:
#2
When I was about 3 or 4 years old I was with my mom and my older brother (5 or 6) and we were on our way home and she decided to stop at the grocery store. I was asleep in the car and she had my brother just stay with me with the doors locked as she ran in to get some milk. For some reason while she was walking into the store she decided to go back to the car and bring us in with her. Well 5 minutes later we paid for the milk and walked outside to see our car was on fire! Turns out there was a new heated seat feature on the car my parents just bought two weeks prior and it malfunctioned. I vividly remember getting driven home by a nice police officer and then my mom was on the phone with her parents for hours crying about what could of been.
#3
I was like 7 or 8 and I had a guy ask me for directions at the library and asked me to come outside to show him which way to go. I called my dad because I couldn’t remember and when I told the guy my dad would talk to him and help me, he got spooked and said never mind and walked off really quickly. 15 years later and I still remember it.
#4
In my sophomore year of high school my older cousin was getting married. I'd originally talked my mum into letting me stay home that weekend instead of travelling the 7hrs to the event. I was going to go with some friends to a basketball game for something to do on Friday night. But on Thursday my mum decided I couldn't miss the wedding and made me go with the family Friday after school. Friday night after we got to the hotel I got a phone call. My friends that I was going to ride with to the basketball game were in a bad car accident. 2 [didn't survive]. It took years of survivor's guilt to get over that because those 2 would have driven in a different car if I'd been there.
#5
Typical cartoon scene of a flower pot flying off a balcony. It fell right where I was standing one minute earlier. I had since moved a couple of steps, but another guy was in that spot, it grazed his shoulder and would have been really dangerous if it hit him on the head.
We called the cops on the guy since we saw other vases on his balcony. Dude was very pissed but took them in.
#6
Going back home from the bakery with my aunt, for some reason she decided to cross the street, wich was unnecessary cause my house was on that same sidewalk. As soon as we crossed the street, a car crashed at that very same place we were, breaking into a house. The driver was absolutely drunk. I was like 6 or 7 when it happened.
#7
My girlfriend and I were vacationing in Branson just 2 weeks ago, and we rode the very same boat on the Ride the Ducks tour that sank in a storm only 5 days later.
#8
Yesterday the metal awning on the food truck I was approaching collapsed to the wind and slammed into the sidewalk.
I almost got sandwiched while trying to get a sandwich.
#9
When my sister was in college her boyfriend was having a party on a yacht and all her friends were going to be there. She didn't go because she had to study for her test the next morning. Everyone on the boat got very drunk and crashed the boat. A few people including her boyfriend [passed]. When she was helping his mother clean out his dorm room, they found an engagement ring in a drawer.
#10
I was pretty psyched to go see the new Batman movie when it was coming out. Everyone I knew from school and friends were going to go see it. At the last minute (only a couple hours before showtime) I decided I shouldn't go since I had to work the next day.
I live in Aurora, CO. My sister went with some friends, but they changed to another theater at the last minute because they couldn't get enough seats together at Century 16. Some friends of mine went, and thankfully were not in THE theater, but still were almost hit by bullets that came through the walls into their theater.
#11
When I was about 13, I came home from playing outside, entering the house into the kitchen through a side door. I walked through the kitchen and into the front of the house, and started up the stairs. Halfway up the stairs, I heard a crazy loud metallic clanging, like pots and pans were falling...and falling and falling.
I came running downstairs to find that the pressure cooker top had popped off, shooting into the ceiling and the pressure release propelled the cooker into the living room, smashing into a wall and rolled to a stop in front of my dad on the couch. The whole time it was spewing boiling chicken grease, as my mom was making chicken soup.
Had I come in 10 seconds later, I would have probably been disfigured from grease burns and maybe been hit by the flying cooker itself.
#12
Almost forgot to wear my helmet before taking the scooter out for a ride in the country. I hit a deer that day. EMTs and Shock Trauma hospital doctors agreed that I'd be [gone], had I not worn that helmet.
#13
When I was 2 years old back in 2001, I lived in California, but my mom and I were visiting my grandparents in New York. My dad was back in California because he was on call as an ENT. My mom and I said goodbye to my grandparents and went to Newark International Airport on September 11th, holding tickets for American Airlines Flight 93, which was of course one of the planes involved in the attacks. We only cancelled our flight and scheduled a later one because my dad was operating on a patient and wouldn't have been able to pick us up in time in San Francisco. If my dad hadn't been called to the hospital, we would've boarded Flight 93 and crashed in Somerset Pennsylvania.
#14
In the weeks before 9/11, I was looking for work in NYC. I had interviewed with a firm that serviced clients on Wall Street; all of their clients were in the twin towers. I held off accepting their offer, as I felt I could do better. Had I accepted it, I almost certainly would have been in the WTC buildings on 9/11.
A couple of weeks after 9/11, I called the company that made the offer: the person on the other end of the line was subdued, and somewhat incoherent, with odd noises in the background. I never learned the fate of that company, but I'm pretty sure their recovery was a rocky one - if they survived the aftermath intact.
#15
When I was about 8 or so my parents sold our house but the one they were buying fell through so we rented a beat-up place while they found a different one.
One night at about 8.45pm we were watching TV and heard this massive crash sound upstairs. We went up there and massive chunks of the ceiling we scattered all over my bedroom including a 4x2ft piece over my pillow. My bedtime was 8.30pm but my parents let me stay up late for pretty much no reason.
#16
I went to a banquet one evening after work, anyway around 9:00ish that night my moms called me and told me that weather alerts had been going off and I should probably head home soon. I told her ok that I would head home shortly. I hung out a little while then decided to roll out, I had to stop and get gas on the way out of town and while I stood there pumping it got extremely dark and the wind picked up blowing [things] around, but I didn't pay it much attention, finished pumping and headed on down the road.
My mom calls me again and asks where I am, she proceeds to tell me that she didn't want me to panic but a tornado just touched down in town. Luckily I was driving away from it and nothing happened to me. But.... had somethings delayed me for just 5 minutes or so I would've been right smack dab in the middle of a tornado.
#17
My family vacationed in Paris for a week in the mid 90's. I was about 10 years old. My mom and stepfather were planning to go to the Arc de Triomphe on a certain day, but I wanted to go to the Eiffel Tower. When I was told we would see the Eiffel Tower another day, I threw a fit. Don't know why it was so important to see the Eiffel tower that day and not two days later. It became a whole argument between me, my stepfather, and my mom. My mom caved (to probably just shut me up) and we went to the Eiffel tower that day, and my stepfather was pissed the rest of the day for my mom caving. We got back to the hotel and saw that a pipe [explosive] had gone off near the Arc de Triomphe and a bunch of people got hurt. The last we spoke to any other (step) family was before the fight and my stepfather told them we were going to the Arc de Triomphe that day and they were frantically calling the hotel to try and get a hold of us. So my brattiness might of saved us.
#18
I grew up in a town with lots of hills. At the bottom of the hills, you could only see the top of the next hill. At the top, you could see a few miles into the distance.
I was driving home from school one day. At the top of one hill, I saw some [jerk] cresting the next hill. He was trying pass another car, on a double yellow, on a hill. If I had been one hill down the road, we would have both been [gone]. I still hate driving on that road.
#19
There is a popular bridge in our area that people often go to walk on and take pictures. My family stopped to take pictures on our way to a campsite when I was a baby. All my siblings and dad walked out onto the bridge but my mom had a very very bad feeling about it. She told herself she was being crazy and to enjoy the scenery, but it just got worse and worse to the point she said she could taste blood in her mouth. She lost it and told my dad to get all the kids off the bridge and back into the car NOW. He thought she was being crazy, but obliged. The next day, a boy that went to our church was on the bridge with his family and was hit by a truck.
My mom has had a few weird premonitions like this that I chalk up to having mom senses.
#20
My dads best friend was taking a job interview one day in September. He lived in NYC, so he took the subway. They were blocked up, so he was 30 mins late. His interview was at the twin towers. It was September 11th. By being late to his appointment, he [survived] the attacks. He was still in an underground train station when it happened. He tells that story to this day.
#21
My dad has ridden motorcycles for as long as I can remember and he used to ride with a group of his friends and I'd tag along on the back of his bike.
One of the rides was planned months in advance by his best friend and I wanted to go so bad (I was 10). I brought it up every single day to my dad how excited I was and he planned out which order the 8 bikes would be in, we would be 4th.
The night before we were supposed to go, I changed my mind because I didn't want my mom to be alone at home with access to my backpack (it had notes in it and I had gotten in trouble for passing notes before). I decided I'd stay home to make sure she didn't find them, told my dad I wasn't going, and he rearranged his bike position to 1st instead.
A few hours in to the ride, my mom gets a frantic call from him that there was an accident.
It was his best friend. His best friend was the 4th bike. A truck pulling out into an intersection saw the first 3 bikes, then pulled out and hit the 4th. Everybody else was fine.
I still hold a lot of guilt because that was supposed to be me. I could've gone and I probably would've taken a bathroom break or done something that put us behind schedule so the truck wouldn't have hit him.
This year makes 10 years and I still feel like I should've gone.
#22
When I worked at Six Flags, they would have employee appreciation nights where the park would close early and we would get to ride the rides and get free carnival food. One of these evenings it had been kind of stormy on and off, and there had been some thunder warnings and flash flood warnings in other parts of the city, unknown to the employees. Nobody bothered to get the word out or think "Hey let's reschedule this."
I was tired from work and opted to go home instead of riding the nearby super hero coaster. A few days later I was alerted to having to cover a shift for a coworker who had been on the super hero coaster when it was struck by lightning. Everyone had to be rushed to the ER with burns and messed up vitals. The riders were hurt pretty badly. Had I stayed and ridden the coaster I would've been shocked with everyone else.
On a lighter note, I was visiting home from school once and my plane landed early so I was able to get out of the airport 30 min earlier. Soon as we get home there's a story on the news about an escaped baboon in the airport, happening precisely at the time I was supposed to arrive. So I narrowly missed getting jumped by a monkey.
#23
Last year I was almost in the midst of the terror attack in Stockholm, Sweden.
I was on my way home from work. And usually (almost every Friday) I went to the exact store that the truck ended up crashing in to. This day however I had decided to wait for a coworker so we could walk together a bit and then go directly home instead.
At first I didn’t realise what had happened, watching the smoke rise barely a block from where I was standing.
On top of that I missed the last train allowed to leave the city center. First I tried getting a taxi, but there were so few that were still taking passengers so...
Ended up going back to my workplace just to feel safe until late that evening.
Felt like forever standing there watching the smoke and hearing people scream, run and hearing and seeing sirens.
It was probably not long at all. But everyone was terrified and it truly warped my time perception.
#24
I was getting my pilots licence. We had started the plane and moved ourselves to take off. About a third of the way down the runway we decide to abort takeoff. (Tldr: we wanted to fly a different right and had got the go ahead so thatmeant we needed more fuel.)
As we go to taxi the plane back the aileron pedal broke. Had we been in the air we would have started spinning out of control and crashed.
#25
I'm late and this'll probably get buried, but I'll say it anyway. Growing up, my father was a civil servant for the Navy. In the summer of 2001 he got a promotion and his new office was in the Pentagon. On the morning of September 11th, my dad was moving into his new office. He walked out to his car at one point to grab more office stuff to move in. As he was walking back in from his car, he watches a plane crash into the Pentagon, exactly where his new office was.
He turned around and went right back to his car and drove home. While he was driving home (usually a 2 hour drive to Southern Maryland that turned into a 4 ish hour drive) he finally gets through the cell lines to call my school to tell me he's okay. I was in 7th grade at the time, and during 6th period my teacher got a call from the office, hung up, and called me to the front of the room. She told me my dad was okay and that he'd be home to meet me at the bus stop. I bawled my eyes out right there in front of the class. We had been watching the news all morning, and I'd had this horrible pit in my stomach since seeing the plane hit the Pentagon in 3rd period.
Just to think, maybe 20 minutes earlier or later and my dad would have been in his office...and wouldn't be here today.
#26
I was about to head into work on Saint Patricks Day, and before I left my roommates and I were having a conversation about what new games we wanted to buy for the house. As I was closing the door, I heard a suggestion that we all chip in and get a switch. I decided to step back in for a moment, agreeing that I would chip in to get one.
I began my walk to work, and as I was coming up to a large turn, a drunk driver had lost control, and plowed straight across the sidewalk, and into a large metal fence about 15 feet in front of me.
Had it not been for the 5 second comment I made about chipping in for a switch, I would have been smashed to bits. Shoutout to Nintendo for creating a console that for the first time in my life, had peaked my interest.
#27
When I was 12, me, my mom, and my sister went to a dollar store late at night after a school play she had. Right when we went in, a car pulled up in the parking lot and my mom got paranoid and rushed us in and out to get candy and a soda. Right when we left, two men got out of the car and speed-walked into the store. The next morning we saw on the news that the store was robbed by them. I guess they waited for us to leave before they did it.
#28
There had been a couple of armed robberies around my route home from work, which I usually walked. One of my coworkers, who lived in the same apartment building as me, was nervous about going home after dark, so I agreed to switch shifts with her so that she could get off in the afternoon and I'd take closing.
I found out the next day that she'd been mugged and shot after her shift. She [survived], thank God, but the fact that I should have been the one walking that same route freaked me out for a while.
#29
Was supposed to drive this narrow route back to base for refuel and food and water. We were at one end and our sister company was trying to come from the opposite end to leave the base. They demanded to go first.
My buddy just so happen to be the driver in their point vehicle as I was for us.
He hit an IED. I watched.
Miss you ski, lock shields.
#30
I got off one of the tubes which was attacked in the July 7th London.
I was a teenager doing work experience in London and I remember seeing American tourists getting on the tube as I got off and thinking about it freaked me out for a long time after.
#31
I was out with some of my friends downtown for my 21st birthday celebrating and getting drunk. Everything was going well until we started to get a weird vibe from the club that we were in. We decided to call it a night as it was getting close to last call. My girlfriend picked us up to drive us home, and when we woke up the next morning we saw something interesting on the news. Some guy had shot randomly into the crowd hitting 4 or so people right outside of the bar that we were at 5 minutes after we left. We narrowly avoided being right in the middle of it!
#32
A friend and I were invited by another friend to the AUF summer camp at Utøya.
We decided not to go, she did...
Survivor's guilt was a completely foreign concept for me up until that moment.
#33
We went to the beach with all my cousins when I was little, all of us would compete to see who could swim out the farthest. (Stupid I know but we were kids) after the last day of beach fun we packed up and headed home where we learned that at the same beach just an hour or so after we had left there had been large sharks spotted in the deeper ends and everyone had to leave the water for a bit.
#34
Idk if this counts but, if my head was where my arm ended up during my car accident, I would've had a broken neck instead of a broken arm.
#35
I was at a demolition derby a couple years ago with my family ( lots of little kids). We got a feeling that we should get up and move seats and go sit with family on the other side of the arena. About 10 minutes after we moved, a truck was rolled over and the driveline on the truck got ejected into the crowd right where we would have been seated. 3 people experienced major injuries and it could have [ended] little children that were with us.
#36
Not scary like some of these, but in 1982 I was flying from Germany to New Orleans with long layover at JFK. This was after a very long bus ride to get to FRA. I never have been able to sleep sitting up so I had been awake forever. I was sitting at the boarding gate in a daze when I heard a call beginning flight boarding. Got in line, boarded, got in my seat, and a person came up and said I was in her seat. She and I were bewildered and a stewardess came up to check our boarding passes. TLDR I almost flew to Sydney, Australia by accident.
#37
I went to a carnival this past Canada Day in a nice suburban neighbourhood.
About an hour before the fireworks were set to go off, a swarm of teens broke out into a mob around something, cameras-a-recording. I didn't know what was going on and wanted to go and see as I was curious.
What I didn't know is that it was a kid who got caught setting off fireworks in the crowd fighting the cops who tried to stop him. Moments after the mob started, 2 more cops show up and immediately release pepper spray.
Had my curiosity gotten the better of me, that would most definitely have been the end of my night.
#38
On Halloween 2015, I was running to the store after I had stopped at home after work. I didn’t have to worry about trick or treaters because we don’t get them in my apartment complex. My brother texted so I stopped in the driveway to check it and to let a white car pass instead of pulling out in front of it as I normally would have done (with plenty of room).
I reply to my brother, check traffic again and pull out and pull up behind the white car at the light at the end of the block. She pulls out to go when the light turns green and almost immediately a dark car hit her going at speed—at least 45 mph. Her car was pushed into the center median but the dark car FLEW and flipped several times before landing a few hundred feet away.
I remember just being in awe for (what felt like) 10 seconds or so because I’d never seen anything like that in person. I pulled over and parked and went to help, along with several other people. There was a cop chasing the dark car so he witnessed everything.
It wasn’t until I’d left, gone to the store and was on my way home, parked at that light, waiting for the light to change so I could turn, when I realized my brother’s text saved me from being that white car. I freaked out after that so I must have been in shock.
I double check intersections before I pull out now.
#39
The other day, I was heading to work, and was delayed a bit by the flowers outside looking pretty. If I did not delay that bit, I would have been in a massive accident between two cars and an ambulance. It happened like 1 minute before I got there.
#40
When I was 5, my family was travelling from Dallas to Houston to visit our extended family. We made a rest stop, but only a short time later, I said that I needed to go again. My parents were a bit irritated - I mean, I'd *just* gone - but I insisted so they pulled into a gas station. When we got back on the highway, we hit crazy traffic that wasn't there before. Turned out, there was a multi-car pile-up about 5 miles ahead of us. We almost certainly would have been one of those cars had I not had an especially small bladder moment.
#41
One of my good friends was at the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival in Vegas on 10/1/17. He had a splitting headache so they left the concert and went straight to bed about an hour before the shooting started. When he woke up the next morning he had a ton of messages and missed calls asking if they were ok. He had no idea why until he checked the news feed.
#42
I walked around a corner in time to see lightning hit a big tree in front of me, which exploded part of it into toothpicks, and then it fell over. If I'd been 15 seconds quicker coming around the corner, I would have been hit by the tree.
#43
I used to take a train to work and then from the train I'd walk a mile to my office. My train got there an hour before work started, so most days I'd go into a convenience store across the street and get something to drink.
One rainy day there had been some issue on the track, so my train ended up being like 5 minutes late. No big deal, I wasn't going to be late for work or anything. As I was walking down the stairs from the elevated station to the road, I heard a commotion. I looked around the corner and saw literally dozens of cop cars pulling up in front of the convenience store, all getting out of their cars with their guns drawn.
I learned later that a man with a knife tried to rob the store, the shop owner defended himself and got [hit] dozens of times (thankfully he lived but he was seriously injured). This all happened when I normally would have been in the store.
#45
This is a lighter one. When I was 13 I was sick and had to stay home from school. Couple kids brought exlax to school and fed it to a bunch of people saying it was chocolate. A lot of people were in the toilet all day and one had to go to the hospital. If I was there I would have chowed down too. Love. Chocolate. Anything. Those kids who brought it got suspended for 3 weeks.
#46
When I was 14, I slept at a friends house and his dad made us wake up early in the morning to go ride to their camp and make sure everything was secured because we had a stormy day ahead. So we leave and are heading to the camp when my buddy starts complaining about his contact so his dad busts a U turn and we head back to their house. My buddy hops out the car and runs inside and about 5 seconds later he comes running back outside with big scared eyes and waved us to come inside.
We immediately did and when I was almost to the door I smelled something burning and assumed the house had caught on fire. We start looking all over and found nothing burning until we went upstairs in my buddies room, the room I slept in the night before. There was a hole in the wall under the window and the window was broken with glass all over. There was a really heavy oak shelf that had been on the wall but had been knocked down down and was literally laying in the exact same place that my head had been when I was sleeping. The house had been struck by lightning and I don’t know if we all would have lived from the strike but I am confident that the shelf would have [ended] me instantly.
#47
Was approaching a light turning yellow. If I floored it I would have gotten past the intersection before it changed to red. Decided not to risk it since I had gotten a ticket for going 5 over a few weeks earlier. As I was braking, a car came speeding right through the red light perpendicular to me. I would have been T-boned if I tried to make that light.
#48
I was 11 years old and living in an apartment where the kitchen and living room were connected. I was in the kitchen when I heard a huge crash and glass shattering, and turned around to see that the ceiling fan in the living room had fallen where I had been standing a mere ten seconds before.
#49
Out late (or I guess early morning, 3 AM) and I get back home with my girlfriend from a taco bell run. We park the car, head inside, start eating. We hear this loud boom, it sounded like a very large explosion. At first I thought the gas station across the street exploded, it was that loud. But we realize that a drunk driver had plowed through the parking lot, hitting a total of about 7 cars. My car did get hit and totaled which yes is bad. But not as bad as, say if we were a few minutes earlier he could have hit us on the road, or hit us as we were parking.
#50
I once watched a guy practicing how to cast a spinning rod at the beach. It looked a bit dangerous as he was casting it sideways with many people around. I stood there watching for a while (meters away!) until somebody called my name. And as soon as I turn my head, a fish hook hits my head from the side. It went quite deep, and sometimes I think: what if I hadn't turned my head at the very last moment? Would I still have 2 eyes?
#51
In the car with my father-in-law, husband, and baby boy. FIL was driving us to lunch. We were the first car at a red light. The light turns green but he hesitated to go for about a second and a half, for absolutely no reason. A car ran the red light and would likely have [ended] my FIL and husband at the speed it was going, and since it was on a hill, we likely would have rolled too.
Highway patrol just getting off the interstate saw the entire thing and pulled the driver over immediately.
#52
Oooh, I've got one from just the other day.
My boss called me before I was about to head to work asking me if I wanted to work my shift at a different store cause one of their drivers called out. I said sure and started heading that way. About halfway there, my boss calls back and says that they found someone else to take the shift and I could just come to my regular store.
A few hours into my shift, my boss comes in and tells me he was visiting that store, and the driver that took the shift I was gonna work got slammed into by a Prius while he was parking, totalling his car.
I know things may have gone differently if it was me, but still that was pretty wild to hear.
#53
So, I have a bad history with log trucks, I physically cringe with my entire body when I see one and either speed up or slow down to stay far from it.
1st time - When I was... maybe 4? My pawpaw was watching me play in the front yard of their trailer. They lived right on a major 2 lane back road between 2 very small towns that saw a lot of traffic. He must have zoned out for a moment, because I rolled a ball into the road and chased it, just as a log truck came flying down the road. When he realized what happened he stood up and screamed for me to stop. I stopped and, according to my family because I've blocked this out at this point, the truck slammed it brakes and slid right past me as I stood on the opposite side of the yellow line. My parents said paw paw nearly had a heart attack that day from the experience...
2nd time - I had my license for about a year (18) and was driving down a back road that came to a stop at another back road. My older (30) friend W was in the passenger seat. As I'm coming to a stop (maybe 50 feet from the stop sign) there's a logging truck coming onto the road THROUGH my lane (as trucks tend to do sometimes). My instinct kicked in quick and I nonchalantly drove us into the ditch as we slid past each other so that the truck wouldn't hit us. I'm annoyed and cursing and pulling the car back onto the road, and I look over and W is just white as a ghost. "Dude, what's wrong?" "...do you not realize what just happened? If you hadn't moved his truck would have CRUSHED your side of the car!!!" It took a while for that one to sink in...
3rd time - it's a year later from the last time (I'm 19) and I'm going down yet another busy back road right up the road from my parents house to see my boyfriend at the time. I'm going down a hill around a sharp turn, maybe 50+mph. In front of me as the trees clear from my view on the left side, I realize the truck is slowed almost completely to a full stop. I had JUST enough time to slam my breaks and slide right into a pine tree hanging off the back of his truck, breaking through my windshield. The log came about 8 inches away from hitting me in the head. How do I know it was a pine tree? When I got to my boyfriend's house (I drove 15min to him rather than 5 back to my parents house because I KNEW I was about to get grounded) I was in such shock that when I brought him out to look at the car, I started cry-laughing at the pine needles stuck in the hole in my windshield...
#54
A few years ago, we were going bar hopping in Baltimore for my buddy’s bachelor party. We got down there nice and early so we could go grab some dinner and not get stuck in rush hour traffic.
This was the night of the riots for Freddy Gray....
We decided to go out anyway and just try to avoid the areas where we heard there was trouble. We were a group of 5 or 6 white dudes who were absolutely smashed and ended up pretty close to the action after getting separated from our group. A guy stops us and says “look, it’s getting pretty crazy up that way (pointing to where we were walking) and people are getting outta control. It’s probably not safe for you white guys to walk through there, I’d take (other route)” we thanked him and went to grab pizza.
The next morning, we saw that a couple guys got the [soul] kicked out of them about 1/2 block away from where we were by a group of rioters.
If you’re reading this: thank you stranger!
#55
There was a domestic dispute infront of my house from our neighbors. I was around 12 and was putting up posters in our block for something.
The domestic dispute from the couple escalated from a shouting match to a shoving match and the guy involved was drunk and quite unhinged.
Our baby sitter pulled me inside back into the house just as the guy was about to approach me. She thought that the neighbor was going to use me in a hostage situation type and grabbed me and slammed the yard gate on his face.
I got yelled at by the baby sitter & my mom about minding my surroundings but not as much as the babysitter giving our neighbor a stern warning. Cops were later called on the couple.
#56
When i lived in Chicago, i was crossing an intersection on Michigan Ave (during the walk symbol) and some [jerk] on a bike ran the red and drove straight into the woman 1 foot in front of me. He flew over his handle bars, idk if he was hurt but i hope he was. The lady was paralyzed on the ground and i helped stabilize her neck until the ambulance came. If i has been faster, it would’ve been me.
#57
I was driving through town roads to get to work when a pickup lost control while exiting the freeway. He skidded into the road in front of me and I had a solid 4 seconds to react. I got safely to work that day because I was a little more gentle on my clutch at the light before that freeway exit. I have a dashcam video but I need to clip it down.
#58
I was working in a touristy village and decided, instead of grabbing my morning Starbucks and waiting another twenty minutes before I was scheduled to work, I was going to set up my portable kiosk early. I had gone into my shop, pulled out the kiosk, pushed it a few streets down, and had finished setting up when police sirens and ambulances started arriving.
They ended up blocking all traffic and no cars were allowed in the village for a good five hours.
I learned later a woman [passed] pinned under a car.
The driver had reverse parked, but there was a slope, so their car slipped forward. Then they panicked and instead of slamming on the brakes they pressed the gas pedal while in reverse and plowed over the woman.
It messed up my day to think how it could've been me if I took my time to get to work that morning.
It happened in the parking lot I crossed not more than ten minutes earlier.
Probably the only time I was glad I started my shift early.
The woman was a tourist.
#59
Not my story but a friend of mine used to work at a pretty successful tech company, specializing in computer chips. He was pretty high up in management and every night he would be the last to leave, locking up the building for the night. One afternoon, his wife called him and asked him to come home early that day. She had recently had a miscarriage and so was going through some emotional stress and of course my friend went home early, and gave the responsibility of closing to his coworker. Later that night, he turns on the news to see that his company was robbed in a well organized heist, and all their expensive chips were stolen. My friend found out from his coworkers that were there, that the robbers were specifically looking for and planned on targeting him when they entered, because they knew he was the highest in management, but luckily he wasn’t there. The robbers all had shotguns and left everyone tied up until police arrived. Pretty scary stuff.
#60
My dad is a truck driver. While riding along with him on a trip one summer, we stopped at a truck stop for some snacks and beverages and some much needed pooping and bathing. My shower acted up a bit and took an extra thirty seconds or so to get going.
Fast forward about three hours later. It's just before sunrise and we're cruising down the interstate with mostly other semis, when we see a tire come off a semi truck heading the opposite direction. It hits the grass median and ramps into the air, and lands on our side of the interstate, now bouncing. After the second bounce it hits the center of the windshield of a semi just ahead of us and one lane to our right. The truck is about twenty seconds ahead of us or so. It immediately serves hard to the right, off the embankment and rolls over onto its side.
Dad and I pull over and are the first to reach the flipped semi. The driver is an older man, probably in his 60s. It's a sleeper cab and his partner, who we later discovered was his twenty-something year old son, had been asleep in the back.
We help the driver out and I climb back in to check on the son. He didn't make it. I'm not a doctor, by any means, but I'm fairly certain the complete detachment of one's head is incompatible with life.
We told the guy it was bad and we needed to wait on EMS and he began freaking out badly and began showing symptoms of a heart attack. EMS arrived and took over. We were stuck there for a few hours until they reopened the interstate. It was a much more somber trip after that.
#61
I had just passed over an interstate bridge when a truck a short distance behind us clipped the edge and whole bridge collapsed into the river.
#62
One morning we were running late and when we were about to leave my mom's cousin called just to say hi. We left pissed off and when we got to school, the mountain next to where we used to park had just slide. We would have been trapped if it wasn't for that phone call.
#63
I was leaving for lunch when someone stopped me on my way out to ask a question. Took like 30 or 45 seconds. Went to my car, got on the road and just missed the light down the road. The truck ahead of me went through and got t-boned by a speeding car that ran the through the light before it was green. The truck actually flipped and slid across the intersection on its hood. Guy in the truck was pretty bad off too. Could have been me in my little compact sedan.
#64
My mom was in the hot sun, and she wanted to go to the park in the shade, and she decided to cross the road. After that a car accident happened and a car landed right were she was previously standing.
#65
I was walking home and got really thirsty, so I decided to grab something to drink in a grocery store near my house and leave
I was kind of tired and thought about staying there for a while, but gave up and followed my original plan of just buying my beverage and going home
A few hours later, through a regional news page post on Facebook, I found out that an armmed robbery happened there about 5 minutes after I left.
#66
Me and my three sisters were crossing the road to get on the bus once. We were standing in a single file line, I was in the front. I was taking some time to talk to my mom who was behind us in the yard, and literally seconds before I stepped foot onto the road to cross, a car came passed by seemingly inches in front of us, like 20 mph above the speed limit.
If I hadn't taken an extra 10 seconds to tell my mom something we'd all probably have been hit.
#67
I was on a road that went out into a 2 lane road and we were about to pull out into the road but there was a car in front of us, they drove out at the wrong time and got hit by 2 cars simultaneously, one coming from the right hit it in the front and one coming from the left on the other lane hit it in the back, causing it to spin around before flipping, that car was almost me.
#68
When I was like 17 I was about to head over to my friend's house for band practice. I would usually walk to the train but about a block down I realized I forgot something and had to go back to my house. When I got to the train station my train was pulling away so I had to wait for another, which luckily came pretty much right behind it. I had to transfer lines downtown to get to the one that would take me to his house and as I'm going down to the subway I see a bunch of people being evacuated. Apparently there was some sort of electrical fire or something on the train that pumped in smoke to the cars. A bunch of people had to be taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation. If I hadn't missed that first train I probably would have been on this and could have been one of those people.
#69
It was just this past winter. I was out late from work and headed home and it had been snowing all day. I have Waze and saw that there was a large accident on the interstate so I detoured. When I got home I saw on the local scanner page the time that the crash happened. If I would have left work on time I would have been right in the middle of it all. The interstate was shut down for hours and it was a mess. A few semis and roll overs were reported along with med flight. Never been happier getting out late than that night.
#70
When I was a kid, maybe 6 or 7, I was standing at the bottom of my driveway. My neighbor called me over to her driveway and 20 seconds later the guy who lived across the street from me sped his car down his driveway in reverse and took out my mailbox, which was right where I had been standing. The wood post snapped clean in half. Dude said his foot slipped, idk.
#71
The summer of my senior year of high school, I got introduced to garage hopping for alcohol (running into open garages with fridges at night and stealing it). One night 5 of my friends who i showed it to, were going and I didn’t want to so I stayed home. It turns out they got the cops called on them and 2 got arrested.
#72
My father and his friend had been on a trip around Asia before going to University. They were in Sri Lanka and thought they should go back home and so they did.
One day later a civil war started in Sri Lanka and airports were closed. They could've been trapped there but, luckily, they weren't :).
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