Live or die on the toss of a coin

In My Humble Opinion
1

In an old X-Files episode, Mulder and Scully meet a man who is able to see how people are going to die in visions etc. He claims that he got this ability shortly after the plane crash which killed Buddy Holly. Also on the plane was Ritchie Valens, who won the seat in a coin toss with Tommy Allsup. This character was obsessed by the fact that life or death could be decided by the toss of a coin, and through concentrating on this he got the supernatural “gift”.

On to my question - have you ever been in a situation where your choice in a 50-50 decision, apparently innocent, has kept you alive when the other choice would’ve killed you (I assume there are no posters here where the reverse is true)? This doesn’t have to have been a random choice like a coin toss, although that’s more interesting. My example was a conscious decision, but it could’ve gone either way:

In the UK, there’s a designation of road “dual carriageway” which means what it says, really - traffic in one direction is separated from traffic in the other direction by something other than some lines painted on the tarmac. Often it’s a strip of kerb or similar. Most of the time, there are two lanes in each direction. What I don’t think is common in the US, but is in rural parts of the UK, is that these two carriageways can have shrubs, hedges, or even trees between them. This means that you can’t see the traffic on the other side. A lot of the time, a road will be single carriageway, with 1 lane each side most of the time, then every now and again, a mile or so of dual carriageway, 2 lanes each side, so impatient people like me can overtake that slow caravan. At the end of the dual carriageway, they merge back together, with an area painted with white chevrons at the end of the overtaking lanes which you’re not meant to drive in, but if you miscalculate then it can happen.

I was driving along just such a stretch of road one night, in the left hand lane (as befits one not currently overtaking). I saw that I was catching up a slower car, but I was also running out of dual carriageway. Already going quite quickly, I pondered whether to speed up and squeeze past, or to slow down and sit behind this car for the rest of my journey. Although it was only for a few seconds, I deliberated on this point a lot - normally I’ll just think “yes” or “no” in these situations, but I really thought about it, and decided to play it safe.

Good thing I did because, obscured by the trees separating us from the other side of the road, there had been an accident, and a van had ended up in the chevrons at the end of the overtaking lane - which I would’ve needed had I overtaken that slower car. I would’ve hurtled along at 80mph, and found myself faced with a stationary vehicle a few tens of feet in front of me - I wouldn’t have stood a chance.

So there’s my dull and overly-detailed story. What’s your interesting one?

2

When I was 12 my dad drove my older brother to meet up with a friend and I went along for the ride. My brother sat in the front passenger seat and asked if he could put his bag in the passenger rear seat - where I regularly sat. I agreed and sat in the rear seat on the driver’s side.

We were stopped, waiting to turn, when another car slammed into us travelling about 40 mph. It hit the side that the bag was on - where I almost always sat.
The 3 of us and the driver of the other car all walked away without a scratch (just the typical whiplash).

It took me a little while to realize that if I hadn’t given up my usual seat I could’ve been seriously injured or killed! :eek:

3

I was a stuntman once, and we drove around with our stunt show. It was about half an hour long and exhibited different – you guessed it – stunts: fire, shooting, fighting, falling, and so forth.

The show’s first instance was the explosion: A person went down in a box, squatting. Another put the lid on and then a bundle of dynamite sticks behind the box; he and the audience counted from ten to one, and a huge explosion blew the box into pieces and the poor guy was thrown a couple of meters towards the audience.

Of course, it was a trick. Among other things, there was a barrel behind the box where the pretty large explosion was, pointing upwards. The walls were fastened by magnets, and beneath the box where smoke charges. The stuntman threw himself away at the same time the explosion went off, and the smoke appeared, and you got the illusion of exploding box and lifeless stuntman.

The first time I did this I remember sitting in the box, squatting, and while the audience counted down, it felt kinda awkward the way I sat, with my face towards the back wall. (There hadn’t been time practicing, and it wasn’t too advanced a stunt anyway.)

I sat with my face towards the back wall when the audience was going “four! – three! – two!” and I suddenly changed my mind, turned the face to the front, and turned my shoulder to the back wall.

Which was a good thing, because this time the “cannon” didn’t point upwards, but against the back wooden wall, about two inches from were my face was a second ago, and it really blew the box into pieces, and really blew the poor pretty lifeless stuntman off the stage.

I would probably have survived without this sudden change of mind, but I wouldn’t have been as pretty as I am today had I not changed my mind, literally the last second.

4

Just to note, the episode is called “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose”. It features Peter Boyle, and it’s one of the best of the series, as well as the season, which is also, in my opinion, the best.

My life’s been in danger a few times, but not on a coin toss that I can recall right now (and you’d think I would). I do have a story from the other side of it, though. I was once possibly seconds away from ‘accidentally’ killing someone.

Sometime around seventh or eighth grade I started getting in a lot of fights. Before that, I just got beat up on a lot. Then something snapped and I became kind of a loose cannon, especially when other people were being abused. Most people stopped messing with me when I stopped letting them, basically, but a few seemed to enjoy pissing me off.

One such was this kid I’ll call Brad. Now, by high school I was one of the founding members of the county’s only LGBT high school club. (Now there’s one in every school). We were not, how you say, so popular, but it was a huge school in a mostly liberal neighborhood, and we pulled it off. Few people started shit with me, but I had to step in on behalf of some of our more vulnerable members more than once. (Brad was not officially playing for Team Rainbow, but someone recently suggested he had a crush on me and that’s why he kept trying to get me to hit him all the time. It’s plausible, now that I think of it, but he may have just been a little jerk).

So Brad starts spreading a true rumor about a couple girls in the club. One’s a senior, the other’s a sophomore, they’re in love, but it’s super top secret because their parents would lose it. Most of us weren’t out at home, but in their cases it could be extra super bad. Brad finds out and immediately starts telling everybody, and I confront him in the hallway after class.

I just wanted to talk. Really. I wasn’t already seeing red because I couldn’t believe this guy kept coming after me and my friends. (If there was one of those innocent halo smileys, I’d put it here). I was calm at first, though. I tried to explain how important it was that he knock it off, that it wasn’t funny or some game, but serious business. He gave me a bunch of attitude, then tried to push me, and – you know, I’ve typed about four lame cliches for ‘we started to fight’, like ‘it was on’, but they all look ridiculous coming from an adult. We started to fight.

I picked him up by the shirt and moved to slam him against a row of lockers when something in my head clicked. I can’t describe it well, now; I was still just as mad, but all of a sudden, I just knew I had to stop. I put him down and backed away, and he started crying, which kind of scared me because – well, it’s just not something you expect to see, even from a sad sack like him. Almost nothing had happened. But I think he knew what it took me about half an hour to realize.

I was sitting in the Vice Principle’s office again when it hit me. Though I’d forgotten all about it in my anger, Brad had been out of school a lot lately…because he’d been in the hospital recovering from a sledding accident, in which he’d broken his back. He was still in a brace, and I think now that my fingers felt it under his shirt, though I didn’t register it. If I had grabbed him differently, I might not have stopped. I might have slammed his back against the metal, and the damage it could have done to his just-barely-healed back, I believe could have rebroken it and possibly killed him.

That was one of the last times I ever got in a fight that wasn’t self-defense or physical protection of someone else. Suddenly it seemed stupid and pointlessly dangerous. Why the hell Brad thought he should tangle with me in his condition, I don’t know, but maybe he assumed I knew and I wouldn’t actually try to hurt him. He wasn’t very bright.

I’ve thought of one of my own, now that this is about three times too long already. I once fell off a catwalk over a stage and plummeted to my death, except that my wrench in my back pocket caught on the rail long enough that I was able to grab the bars and hang on until my partner came to save me. Another time, I stepped out of a spot just before a lamp (read: head-crushing 80-100lb fresnel) crashed on it.

5

Yep, yep, yep and yep.

Thanks for reminding me of the name of the episode - I knew it contained the guy’s name and was in Series 3 - but I just couldn’t remember.

As for your tale - :eek:

6

Oh, how I wish this was true. :frowning:

I’ve had many instances (about once a month on average) where I’ve had a feeling that I should, say, turn left and go a different way home or not take a ride with that friend and walk instead, but I’ve never knowingly avoided disaster.

7

Not long after I graduated from college, I went to New Hampshire for a long weekend at a lake house with some buddies. The house belonged to the parents of one of my buddies, Dan.

We arrived at the shore late at night. There wasn’t enough room on the family’s little motorboat for all of us, so we decided that Dan and two others would go out first, then Dan would return for the rest of us. Before Dan could come back to pick us up, however, the boat was hit by another boat loaded with drunken teenagers. Dan was very badly injured, was in the hospital for months and still bears the scars.

I wonder now and then what would’ve happened if I’d been on that boat, or if Dan had just been a little earlier or a little later leaving, in which case the teenagers would’ve sailed right past him. How many dangerous situations do I avoid every day - say, in my daily commute - just because of a quirk of timing?

8

From the testimony of Linda Kasabian at the trial of Charles Manson:

Linda Kasabian: “… after I had been driving for a few minutes there was a small white sports car in front of us …”
DA Vincent Bugliosi: “Do you know who was in the car?”
LK: “I believe it was a man, one person.”
VB: “No one else was in the car with him?”
LK: “No, I don’t think so.”
VB: “Did Mr. Manson say anything to you with respect to that car?”
LK: “Yes, he did.”
VB: “What did he say to you?”
LK: “He told me to follow it and at the next stoplight when it was green to pull up beside it.”
VB: “When the stop light was green?”
LK: “…excuse me, red … . Charlie wanted me to pull up beside the car, and Charlie was going to get out and kill the man, shoot the man, whatever.”
VB: “Did you in fact pull up next to this white sports car at a red light?”
LK: “Yes, I did.”
VB: “Did Mr. Manson get out of the car or start to get out of the car?”
LK: “He proceeded to get out of the car, yes.”
VB: “And what happened at that point?”
LK: “The light turned green, so the car left.”

When I first read that, it absolutely chilled my blood. I’ve often wondered if the guy driving the white sports car ever knew that the only reason he wasn’t murdered that day was because of the changing of a stoplight.

9

I had a situation similar to Mrs Johnson.

My dad was driving my brother and me home from a store. We were both in the back. I decided I wanted to sit in the front seat, so I climbed over, sat for a second and said, “oh yeah, put on your safety belt”. I had just buckled in and 1 second later a woman rammed us as my dad was slowing because of a pedestrian crossing in front of us. She hit us so hard that the seat belt tore out of its moorings and I took out the windshield with my head (but didn’t go through). I hit the glass with the spot on the forehead reserved for “heading” soccer balls.

Later, the cop told my dad that I would have been “shredded” had I not buckled in.

10

Well, that’s just the thing, isn’t it? In the vast majority of these situations there are so many variables that you can’t calculate how a change in one would affect al of the others. Something as simple as who sits where in the car throws off all of the possible timing for everything that transpires after.

The stunt story has the most validity in this case, actually even more than the OP plane crash, for just that reason.

11

Was this the one where the guy casually mentions to Mulder, ‘Autoerotic asphyxiation is not a dignified way to go.’?