Have you ever witnessed an "action movie moment" in real life?

In My Humble Opinion
81

While staging back out of Iraq after Gulf War I, our battalion stayed near KKMC for a couple of weeks. All of our various vehicles were lined up “motor pool” style instead of a disperesed tactical formation.

Due to an electrical malfunction, one of our 5-ton fuel trucks (looks like this, but with a fuel tank in the bed of the truck) caught fire one night. The entire truck was engulfed in flames, and the vehicle was parked next to other fuel trucks.

On their own initiative, the driver/commander of an M-88 drove right up to the back of the burning truck (hatches closed, of course), while his crew, doused in water, crawled underneath the track to hook a tow cable up to the back of the burning truck, before crawling back out.

Once his guys were clear, the TC/driver then backed up and pulled/towed the burning truck out of the line of vehicles.

After they were about 100 yards away from anything, the M-88 crew again crawled under the track to disconnect the tow cable so the track could get to a safe distance away.

While in Iraq, our unit caused a pretty big explosion, when we set demo* on an Iraqi maint. depot full of fuel, oil, some ammo, etc. Shit blowed up real good.

*Being tankers, our “demo” was a couple of WP grenades that we pulled the pins on before running like hell.

They wouldn’t let us fire it up with Ma Deuce or the Coax, much less the 120.

82

I saw a large SUV go end-over-end at high speed on a freeway. No idea what made it do that.

83

I was an EMT so I have seen plenty.

One of my moms friends was grabbed and killed by Edmund Kemper they are pretty sure he picked her friend up a matter of minutes after she and my mom parted ways.

84

A friend of mine has spent 24 years in the fire department servicing a particularly dangerous stretch of road in the desert outside of Vegas. For a two year stretch of time, he averaged one vehicle extraction rescue a week. He’s seen more vehicle accidents than he can remember, and he says there was exactly one single time in which a person ejected from a vehicle during a crash lived. All the others died. You witnessed an extremely unlikely, probably even unique event.

85

I described witnessing just that, upthread.

86

My uncle and I operated a service station in Santa Cruz at that time. I’m almost certain Kemper bought a tankful of gasoline from me. If it wasn’t him it was a huge guy driving a black Ford.

87

That looks like something they’d drive on in Top Gear. (Hell, they probably have.)

Mine involve cars. My sister lives in a subdivision; the speed limit on the divided road outside her townhome is 35 MPH. While walking back from a nearby park, we saw a white SUV, going way too fast for the area, hit the curb, launch into the air, and roll over. No one was hurt; I saw the driver manage to get out of the vehicle and then sit down, dazed.

During my undergrad years in Madison, me and the boyfriend were holed up in our apartment, snug as bugs while a winter storm howled around us. We got to watch a car come down the hill, lose control due to the ice, and crash into 4 or 5 parked cars on the side of the road. I doubt there was anything the driver could’ve done (other than not drive) - it was super icy.

88

I’ve had a few action movie “comedic interludes”. The best one was when I worked overnights at an Amtrak customer parking lot during college. The lot was at the end of the road. One night I hear sirens and see flashing lights headed my way. As I found out, they were in pursuit of a car. They chased him to the end of the road, where little old me was sitting in a small shack at the exit of the parking lot. Once the driver being chased saw that the road ended, he squealed his car in a tight turn and drove through the wooden barrier next to the shack. Three police cars followed him through. They drove through the lot and through the barrier at the entrance of the lot and proceeded back down the road away from me, leaving me with two broken barrier gates and no proof of what happened. Later a police officer came back to get my statements for his report.

While not the best, the time the police found my formerly stolen car two days after a different jurisdiction had returned it to me and I ended up surrounded by police officers pointing their guns at me kind of ranks up there too.

89

I think I’ve told this story before here, but what the hey.

The setting: Bayside (Queens, NY). When I was about 19 or 20, I dropped a friend off at a laundromat, where he was supposed to pick up a few items while I waited for him. Since there was no place to park and I didn’t want to block traffic by double-parking, I decided I’d just drive around the block a couple of times. To do so, I’d need to make a series of left turns to complete the “circle.”

I get to the first corner, which was near an apartment complex, and there was no light, just a series of stop signs. I got to my sign about five to ten seconds before the car to my left, a brown blah car (I have no idea from types of cars, but it was as nondescript as you can get), reached his. Since I had already stopped and this car was just starting to make his stop, I began my left turn, in no danger whatsoever of causing this guy any harm. (He’d stopped by this point.)

As I passed the car and continued on my way, out of the corner of my eye in the rear view mirror, I saw the brown car suddenly make a sharp U-turn and head in my direction. I mean, this U-turn was fast – screeching tires and everything. There was no way this was just a guy who realized he was going in the wrong direction. He was barrelling after me, no doubt of it.

In my mind I kept thinking, “what the hell? Does he think I cut him off? Why is he so pissed off?” Anyway, I kept driving and pretended to myself that the car was not pursuing me. This oh-so-brilliant tactic worked until the car came right up to my car, a few feet away, and tried to pass me to my left. When I took a glance out at him, I saw the driver lift something that metallic (or at least shiny enough to flash in the sunlight) and point it at me.

My heart nearly leapt out of my throat. I mean, what the fuck was I doing in Queens, anyway, I was a nice kid from Great Neck (a suburb on Long Island, not part of NYC) and now I was about to get blasted away by some psycho in a drive-by! If we’d had text speak in those days my mind would’ve been all OMFG WTF!!! Anyway, I sped up so the guy couldn’t get to my driver’s side, and skipped the next stop sign altogether (no traffic fortunately) in order to get back to Northern Boulevard, which is a main thoroughfare in that area – I figured I was safer in the more public four-lane street than these nondescript Bayside roads. The guy keeps right on my tail, blaring his horn and doing his damndest to screech over to my driver’s side again, but I totally evaded him with my mad driving skillz (and I must say I did a surprisingly good job considering I’d never even gone over the speed limit at this point in my life).

Finally I reached the red light near Northern Boulevard and had to stop because there was a lot of busy cross traffic ahead of me. My heart was pounding out of my chest when I noticed the guy in the brown meh-mobile screeching to a halt, getting out of his car (slamming the door behind him) and come stalking up to me.

Like a total idiot, I rolled down my window. (To this day I don’t know why I did.) When the guy reached me, he held up the metallic flashy thing that I’d been certain was a weapon:

A badge.

The fucker was a cop. I stared at the badge in shock as the guy, probably my current age (40s) yells at me: “Didn’t you see that “no left turn sign” back there?!!!”

I was agape like a moron as I processed what had happened. And somehow, this 19-year-old utter wimp who was (and frankly still is) incredibly intimidated by authority had the temerity to say: “Are you kidding me? THAT is why you started chasing me?”

“Yes! Why didn’t you stop when you saw my badge?!”

“I didn’t think it was a badge, I thought it was a gun!” I was starting to cry a little at this point, both from relief/fear and also anger. “I didn’t see the ‘no left turn’ sign, I just was going around the block, and then you started after me and I thought you had a gun and why the hell were you going all Starsky and Hutch on me just for a no-left-turn sign?!”

The cop, to his credit, looked taken aback and I think he could see how genuinely scared and upset I was. He may also have been amused by the Starsky and Hutch line (in retrospect, I can’t believe I came out with that). He said in a much-quieter and less accusatory tone, “Well, okay. I won’t give you a ticket or anything but you did make an illegal turn back there, and then you didn’t stop at the stop sign–”

“Of course I didn’t, I thought you were some nutcase who was gonna shoot me. You didn’t have any sirens or anything, I had no idea you were a police officer! I’m sorry I missed the sign and didn’t stop but you really scared me.”

Basically he sort of mumbled an apology and a warning to me to do a better job at reading local signs, and went back to his car.

I had to sit for like ten minutes before I could continue around the block to my friend, who was waiting there for me and started to snark at me for making him wait. Basically I said bite me, dude*, I was doing you a favor and then suddenly I was involved in a scene from The French Connection!

  • (Or i would have if we’d spoken like that in the late 1980s.)

Sooo that’s my action scene: a car chase, with me as the wrongdoer with a cop on my heels, though originally I thought the plot was me as the innocent victim of a psychotic road-rager.

90

And a good one it was, thanks for the retelling…

91

I was once in a high speed game of chicken. A casual friend offered me a ride home at night. For some reason he and a truck got into a spitting contest on the highway. Needless to say that was the end of our friendship.

92

(I’ve got many traffic accident related moments, but instead I’ll try to add some variety.)

I was walking out of a bank on a busy main street and heard the echo of police sirens. I continued towards my car, noticing that it was a lot of sirens and they were getting closer. I was just a few steps away from my car, when I could see police cars coming from all possible directions. Lots and lots of police cars, all coming super fast and all pretty much coming to a screeching halt all around me! I just stood frozen, likely with a comical look on my face, as the police quickly jumped out of their cars with guns drawn and started running towards me!

And then they just kept running past me and surrounded the bank. What really sucked was they had blocked my car (and all traffic on two roads) in, and with possible gun-play ensuing, I couldn’t just get the heck out of there. But after a few tense moments, it became clear the situation was abruptly diffused. Someone had accidentally tripped the silent alarm. :smack:

I’ve got a few hurricane stories, too… maybe next time.

93

Just over a month ago I was walking through Mission Hill in Boston and saw my first real corpse in an alley, in broad daylight. The sight becomes ever so slightly real to me every day.

Also, there was a massive anti-tuition hike demonstration in Montreal on November 10th, and though I didn’t participate myself I was working in an office two blocks away from the locus of the demonstrations. Those were some damn low-flying helicopters. When I went into a nearby Tim Hortons to study later that night, I saw a group of French students talking to a cop, their faces blotched by pepper spray. Context-dependent, yes, but as a student that was an impressive sight. I later learned the riot police had been on campus that night. Students were beaten and arrested. Real shit.

On a more humorous(?) note, once during my first year at uni I was sitting on the field watching Casablanca when suddenly what seemed like every helicopter in the city converged on some unidentified point in downtown Montreal somewhere southeast of McGill campus. There must have been two dozen of them, coming from several directions, all heading to the same place, all flying low enough to be clearly visible and drown out the movie. Nothing in the news about anything the next day, never seen anything like it since.

These are pretty weak stories, but this last one is funny: I’m standing outside a campus building with my diminutive female friend, shooting the breeze before work, and some adult guy with an unfamiliar ID lanyard comes up to us and says, “So, a Russian mobster was gunned down in NDG (western residential neighborhood in Montreal). I know it was one of you guys. Was it you?” Bewildered, I answered no, and added that I had no idea what the hell he was talking about. To this, he replied, “Come on.” I restated my innocence and he left. Never saw anything about a shooting in NDG in the news after that.

94

It WAS amazing. The embankment was covered with really long, kind of clumpy grass and it was soft and wet from rain or dew or something. It was steep but not too steep. I guess all those factors came together to give a relatively soft, sliding landing. I also don’t know how fast the car was going when it overturned. We had passed through a toll both about a quarter mile prior. It was pretty far ahead of me but I do remember seeing the tail lights as it rolled and thinking “That didn’t look right”.

95

Holy shit. Just over a month ago?

Many years ago a good friend got mugged there. He told the mugger he didn’t have even a nickel on him, so the thug told him he was going to die. (He had a gun.)

And I work just a couple of blocks from there!

96

Maybe a month and a half ago now. There wasn’t really time to take it in, since the famously accommodating BPD was there. It was right across from the Roxbury Crossing T stop, between what I think were two restaurants, for Christ’s sake. Pretty jarring after waking up in a Northeastern student’s apartment.

97

Thought of one that was definitely an action movie moment.

One day when I still lived in the apartment in Toronto, I walked out to go to work, and made it all the way to the bus stop before I realized that there was no traffic in the plaza parking lot, and there were police cars around, and a helicopter hovered overhead, and there was intense activity around one of the stores.

They were filming an action movie. :slight_smile:

Another time I came home, and there were immense lights shining into one of the apartments in the building across the street. Yep, another movie shoot. We were usually warned of them beforehand though; a notice would go up in the lobby of the building.

98

Ah, OK, that kind of makes a difference that the cops were there. I imagine that it would have been a lot creepier if it was just you there.

So a guy is on Mission Hill, and he flags down a cab. He gets in and tells the driver to take him to the hospital. “Peter Bent?” asks the driver. “No, I just bruised it a bit.”

99

Actually, speaking of action movie moments, I wasn’t alone either - I was with two other kids, one of whom is a criminal justice major who had a very action-cop-like air of detached resignation at witnessing the scene.

100

I once ran into a burning building to save an old lady.