Since I brought it up, heres the old stalking thread.See if any near death experiences there.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=16267
I was driving down a 4 lane road with a large grassy median during a screaming monsoon of a Florida summer thunderstorm. It was noonish, but the storm was so heavy that it looked like late dusk, and within a 10 minutes, a huge puddle stretched from the edge of the road to about halfway through the right lane. I was driving an old Volvo with bald tires and crappy wipers, squinting out of the rapidly-fogging windshield and noting with dismay that I could barely see the end of my own hood. I glanced down and noticed I was only going about 20 mph and decided I had better get out of the left lane before someone drove right up my ass. I started to change lanes, and as soon as my right front tire hit the edge of the aforementioned puddle, my car started to spin. I’m not sure how many 360s I did, but I didn’t get any traction until my car finally stopped with a lurch on the median, and I was facing toward the oncoming traffic. I had long enough to realize that I had stopped and that I was not going to die before 7 or 8 cars zoomed by in the lanes I had just spun across.
I’ve lived a (watch for the oxymoron, folks)* pretty boring* life.
I’ve only done one not so smart thing in my life: In Girl Scouts, visiting a Dairy Farm I touched the electrical fence that penned the cows in. Somehow my hand went from being infront of me, to being behind me. If it had not been connected to my body, it probably would have gone across the yard.
I just remember walking away from it going, “That wasn’t smart.”
About 4 years ago, sometime in October, I was going home from school with my sister. A thunderstorm had just passed, so it was still wet out and a new layer of leaves had just fallen, thanks to the wind from the storm. We are driving along, mindin our business when we start to take a hard right turn. My sister swerves into the other lane, just across the yellow divider, and then yells “SHIT!”- another car was coming right at us. She pulls the car to the left, but pulled to much, the back end started to spin so she tried to turn back to the right. We ended up doing a 180 in the street before hitting a telephone pole. Had we hit the pole about 6 inches more to the left, I would be dead. My sister too.
Arnold: I’m so grateful you and the others are okay. That’s all that matters. Cars can be replaced, but people can’t.
NTG: what a great story. I smiled throughout it. Sorta similar syndrome: as a nonexceptional child, I mixed “bad people” getting electrocuted, high-voltage power towers that fuzzed the radio and bad, grade-B sci fi movies my folks didn’t know I watched. Those huge towers with multiple looping cables became MONSTERS, and my poor parents wondered why I cringed and tried to crawl under the back seat of the car every time we had to pass under one. (I still hate driving under them.)
My closest brush was totally surreal. Driving south on I71, my passanger asleep, clear day, light traffic. All of a sudden hell broke loose. A little yellow Pinto driving north swerved, jerked, clipped a semi (which swerved and overturned in the ditch), cut in front of another car (which steered out it) and then it hit the median.
The Pinto had to have been doing at least 70 by that time. It was a shallow median so the car sailed, hit and lofted right back up into the southbound lanes.
This is taking much longer to describe than it took to happen. The Pinto literally sailed about a foot past and over my bumper. I’d braked–the stupidest thing possible–so it was a miracle the Pinto didn’t crash into the roof of my car. I was in the passing lane, and the car beside me sensibly goosed it and got out of the way–which assuredly saved the lives of everyone in that car.
The Pinto landed in the next lane, skidded over the berm and into a field. Every car just drifted to the side, a sort of shaking “WTF!?” nerves taking over. By purest luck, a cop car had just passed so help was right on the scene. I was struggling loose of my seat belt–fingers didn’t work well, oddly enough–to offer help when my passenger finally woke up. All I could do was stutter, “There was a flying yellow Pinto!”
(FWIW, they were shit cars, barbeques on wheels, but this one fortunately didn’t catch fire. And it’s kind of amazing it would even go that fast. I never found out what happened to the people in that car.)
Veb
My earliest memory of being scared I was going to die happened when I was 10 or so. I stood about 5’ and I thought I could go into the 5 1/2’ side of the pool and swim around there. I jumped in, but the water got over my head and I was choking on it and I couldn’t get back above the surface. My sister’s boyfriend is the next thing I remember, pulling me out and helping me cough out all the water that got into my lungs. Since then I’ve been terrified of water and I don’t like to swim anymore.
Another thing that happened earlier to me but I didn’t feel I was going to die was when I had cancer. I was 4 1/2 and had cancer in my kidney. I had chemo, radiation and finally surgery. The doctors said I had 6 months or a 10% chance to live. And now it’s been about 16 years since I had that surgery. So I consider myself very lucky their death pronouncement wasn’t right.
I was a passenger in a car driven by my friend’s husband, Vinny. He was born and raised in Connecticut. He drove us to Atlantic City from Stamford. I know how Princess Diana must have felt right before she died. There was a LOT of traffic, and Vin never went below 70. He weaved in and out of lanes like he was Mario Andretti. I was so afraid I couldn’t even get the words out to tell him to slow down.
We got there in one piece, thank God, but I will never step foot in a car when he’s driving again. He will kill someone someday. It’s just a matter of when and who.