Porsche Cayenne driver comes within a Planck length of death, several others come uncomfortably close, no one is seriously hurt. FOCUS: Had a close brush with death? We've probably done this before, but what the hell...
I'm sure everyone in the Dallas area either heard about this last week, or was stuck in the traffic on the Tollway. I was doing contract work on the 6th floor of the Pizza Hut headquarters building just south of the accident, we heard the first siren and watched the mess all morning. I still can't believe no one going north got creamed.
I had a similar thing happen to me a few months ago. Copy 'n pasted from my blog: Spoiler So I avoided a head-on collision the other day… Seriously, it was out of a movie. I never could have come up with this if it didn’t happen. Near-accident scene: two lanes each way divided by a flat median covered in a couple feet of snow, about a lane and a half wide. I’m on the inside lane going north to a gas station. Three to five minutes earlier… I drive out of my building parking lot while calling Shanny. As I dial, Sasa, a friend from my building, drives past and sees me looking down at my cell, not paying attention to the road. Shanny doesn’t answer. I get out of our area approaching the freeway overpass, and receive a text from Sasa: Don’t text and drive. It’s dangerous. I haven’t talked to Sasa in weeks, so I look down, look up puzzled at the road, and look back down while crossing the freeway. I start putting it together…oh, that asshole must have seen me in the parking lot playing with my phone, and assumed I was texting…what an assho- As I curse Sasa, two things happen: Shanny calls back, and a guy driving the inside lane going south, and really fast, ramps up the iced snow bank and launches over most of the median, heading directly into my lane at an angle to my left. I hit answer on my phone at the same time I see the entire bottom of a black, 99-ish Dodge Ram four-by-four truck. Now, I know in stories like this the person involved can easily mis-remember, and even subconsciously exaggerate not-so-minor details. I admit I may be off on how close impact really was (no chance it was more than two trunk lengths though), but I know everything up to this point is true, including seeing the entire bottom of that fucking truck (and especially the whole calling/texting thing, obviously). So he lands and continues into my lane as I drop my phone and swerve hard to my right. Shanny hears every beautiful thing I have to say, starting with something along the lines of, “what in the mother-fucking Christ-balls was THAT?” It’s a green light ahead but everyone in both directions stops, and the guy who luckily wasn’t right beside me when I swerved catches up and rolls down his window. “I saw air under his back tires!” “What the fuck?” We look back to see him continue driving the wrong way in my lane, get to the freeway intersection and cross back over to his original side. I pull into the gas station and check my pulse, remembering the Dexter episode where as a kid he stands on the edge of a building to try and make his heart race. Mine feels normal, but my arms and neck are vibrating with adrenaline, so much so I need both hands to dial the phone. I even switch hands while talking so I can squeeze the steering wheel and explain to Shanny what just happened. Then he tells me his version. “I figured you either almost crashed your truck, or accidentally hit answer during some really violent sex. Either way, it sounded intense.” I text Sasa back: Dude. Your fucking text almost killed me. Then I text Shanny: Wouldn’t that have been creepy if you just heard me die? He replies: That’s macabre, dude. Though it did cross my mind. I’ve studied the site many times since, trying to figure out how it all happened. The obvious guess is he fell asleep, which would pretty much explain it. I doubt he was drunk, based on how well he recovered – the fact he didn’t roll is shocking enough. It wouldn’t surprise me, though, if he was awake but just distracted like I was. I never noticed before, but the road on that side of the freeway has a very gradual grade and curve. There were no cars for him to follow and, since he was definitely speeding, looking down for the wrong few seconds easily could make it impossible to miss the curb. Now whenever I’m in the area I keep an eye out for a black truck. I wanna find the guy. Not to report him, just to find out what it was like from his perspective, and how the fuck he recovered. <a class="postlink" href="http://thesuperfantastic.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/so-i-avoided-a-head-on-collision-the-other-day/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://thesuperfantastic.wordpress.com/ ... other-day/</a>
When I was about 11, I was kind of an idiot. For some reason that I still haven't figured out, I was roller skating down this steep hill. I was trying to get back up the hill (on roller skates) and, as I was about to reach the top, I started rolling down the hill backwards. This wouldn't have been death-defying on it's own, but at the bottom of the hill and a little to the left, there was a 50 foot drop onto the concrete bottom of a 3-inch deep waterway. Through some miracle of friction, I stopped myself three feet before I would have fallen.
- Going 45 mph on a two lane street, suburban in the on-coming lane decided to pick up his cell phone and start texting. I was watching as he looked down, picked up his phone, put it in front of him and swerved completely into my lane. I jerked my car into his lane (the on-coming lane, which he was previously in) and fortunately there were no cars behind him. Near miss to say the least. - Skiing, lost control, went crashing down a hill. Flew into the simple "caution" tape signifying basically a straight drop off a cliff. Fortunately, it caught me. I don't know why or how, but that had me kissing ground (or rather, snow) for a while. - In an airplane (recently) 35,000 feet over the Pacific on the way back from Hawaii. Hit a storm that had us dropping hundreds of feet in a shot, flight attendants crawling down the aisles on their hands and knees, and people calling their loved ones on their cells. - Venice, Italy, hammered drunk, miles away from our hotel we didn't know the name of, lost, wandering accidentally down dark alleys, didn't speak the language, didn't have any money left on us to bribe the local druggies hanging out on the street to help us back. Of all the incidents mentioned in this post, this one in Venice actually had me the most scared. - This almost killed me too. - Then there was that time I almost died in a hospital from a brain tumor, but it seems like I write about that every third thread.
In 2001 I was in a single vehicle accident where we slid into a tree. I was behind the driver, and both people on the passenger side- the driver's friend and the girl that was with me were dead on impact. I have a sore hip, migraines and loss of feeling in my hand from it, but I walked away from it in a daze. It was a sight I won't mention and hope none of you ever have to see, make no mistake. The driver was over the limit (to the extent I was unaware), and did not get a mark on him. Worst night of my life. Last December coming back from Michigan me, my wife and our one-year-old daughter were hit head-on by the only car on the road when we were almost home. We were doing about let's see...55 mph when the car coming towards us decided to make a left hand turn twenty feet away from us. I was annihilated by the airbag (having a death grip on the wheel), my wife was in the backseat only had the middle lap belt on because she was keeping the baby company. This accident brought the pain for the two of us, but nothing life-changing. I pulled my daughter out of the wreck with her giggling like a pint-sized lunatic. Those rear-facing seats really do their magic. The people we hit-get this- were Americans that were heading back to the States (I cannot make this shit up), and the were in the middle of making a wrong turn when I hanged ten into them! Another banner night automobile experience for yours truly.
My life has never flashed before my eyes, but it did blow up in my face, knocked me out and I woke up in a psych ward.