People Who Escaped Death By Pure Luck Share Their Experiences

Whether we want to think about it or not, we all know that life is not guaranteed. As well as our lives might be going, we may not be here tomorrow.

Grim, right? Fortunately, some people have come face-to-face with death and lived to tell the tale.

Bracing themselves, Redditor Traditional_Sea603 asked:

"People who escaped death by complete luck, what happened?"

Green Means 'Go,' Not 'Safe To Go'

"The light turned green at the intersection. I started to move forward, but the driver in the lane next to me honked and hit his brakes. I hit my brakes too and looked around."

"Just then, a car blew through the red light going 45+ miles an hour. Had I continued through the intersection, my little hatchback might have been T-boned on the driver's side by a much larger vehicle."

"Thank goodness that other driver saw the car about to run through the light and honked his horn or I might have been flattened."

- Jim_Farnsworth

"This exact thing happened to me, except it was a dump truck. I couldn’t see around the car next to me but just had a feeling to not pull forward."

"The best advice I ever got was, 'Green means go, but that does not mean that it’s safe to go.'"

- gingerdeadmann

"I always look both ways before proceeding on a green light. Do not trust other drivers."

- NoMrsRobinson

Not The Pancakes You Want

"I was 16 in Bermuda, riding my moped into town when I came up to a bus stopped at a red light. I came to a stop, and then, as is tradition, I scooted around the bus to be at the front of the traffic."

"No more than 10 seconds later, a second bus plowed into the back of the first bus at 30 or 40 miles per hour. I would have been pancaked, no question."

"Apparently, the second bus driver had had a medical event and lost consciousness. I just sat on the side of the road for 30 minutes and looked at the trees, contemplating my mortality."

- awtcurtis

King Of The Jellyfish

"I was swimming at an Australian beach, stupidly not between the flags, got smacked by a rogue wave, and was stuck in a riptide."

"I was knocked out cold and pretty much drowned. Still to this day, I don't know how I got to shore. When I woke, I was up on the wet sand of the beach and had five jellyfish around me."

- hUmaNITY-be-free

"Bless those jellies. They carried you in the loving embrace of their tentacles."

- sudomatrix

"That's about the only conclusion I can really come to. There was no one around when I came to."

- hUmaNITY-be-free

"Most rips come back to the shore, whether that's a beach or not is pure luck of the day but also semi-predictable. Those jellies likely were caught in it, same as you. It's probably lucky you got knocked out, sorta. Most people who die in riptides exhaust themselves swimming against it."

- Zran

Too Stunned To Speak

"I was driving home from a party with a friend in the car. I had a cop car on random patrol following me down to a main intersection. Avoiding any sort of risk of getting a ticket, I was being extra cautious when waiting for the light to change."

"My side had only just changed to green, and since I was slower than normal moving off the line, it stopped me getting plowed by the semi that blew through the other part of the intersection on a red at full speed."

"I was just stopped there in stunned silence. Even the cops took a minute or two to reflect on what had happened before they peeled off and lit that truck up."

"I ended up coming back along the road where the cops had finally managed to pull that driver over. They were five kilometers away from where the incident happened."

- W2ttsy

Such A Close Call

"My only example... We went to a party at Paul Smith College; my friend's favorite cousin was a student there. There was a bonfire, booze, and someone had the bright idea to bring out a snowmobile."

"I was gonna ride on it but had to go to the bathroom. I guess I took too long because he asked a different girl to ride with him. She did."

"They were both killed less than two minutes later. They drove out on a frozen lake and went far enough out to hit a giant rock many of us have tried to swim to during the summer."

"It was traumatizing. It blew my mind for a long time that had I just held my pee in, I'd be the one currently in a coffin instead of Kristine."

- Murky_Ad_5668

"The Most Logical Thing"

"I was at an indoor shooting range testing a potato cannon (don't ask). I was leaning against the stall wall with my hand behind my head while my buddy took a shot with it."

"Suddenly, I felt a pinch/burn sensation on my wrist. I took a look at my arm to see blood streaming from a half-inch deep hole on my wrist."

"The id**t in the stall next to me wasn't sure if his handgun was empty, so he did the most logical thing. He pointed it at the stall wall and pulled the trigger."

"The bullet grazed my wrist, about three inches from my head. That's the only time I've ever seen an RSO (Range Safety Officer) tackle someone."

- JackCooper_7274

Just Playing House

"Not me, but my father tells a story of driving along a bush road in Bougainville before the revolution there. He was in the car with my mom, baby me, and my five-year-old brother."

"There was a cardboard box on the side of the road, blowing a bit in the window, like an empty shipping box type thing, and he was going to run over it to amuse my little brother. At the last moment, he pulled away though, worried about there being something inside it."

"As we drove past, he looked back in the rearview mirror and saw two little kids crawl out of the box and look after him as we drove down the road."

- axiomatic-

A Less-Seasoned Rider

"Car accident Moped vs Oldsmobile. I was the moped driver."

"On a straight road, a car turned from the oncoming lane across traffic. Being a new-ish motorcycle driver (moped), I knew enough to know I was f**ked."

"But instead of putting it down or turning or anything, I took my hands off the steering and wrapped my head as I impacted (no helmet), inverting both knees on the handlebars, breaking the key off inside my right knee, and dislocating of my right shoulder as I spun into the windshield, shattering the windshield and dislocating my hip on the concrete."

"My ignorance saved my life. A seasoned rider would have put the bike down and likely been run over. Taking my hands off the steering saved my fingers, saved my head and neck (to an extent), and the shoulder (my right was the arm that wrapped my head first, and the impact dislocation would have been my head if I hadn't)."

"The impact speed was 50 miles per hour. Not a single bone broken but permanently f**ked my back. And realistically, I should be dead."

- CommanderAze

A Rollercoaster Of A Story

"I'll try to make a long story short. My ex-wife and her boyfriend she had behind my back tried to hire someone to kill me so that she could have my life insurance and there wouldn't be a custody battle over our daughter like there would be if she just left me."

"Luckily for me, the guy they hired to do the job was an undercover deputy working a completely unrelated case against the drug-selling gang her boyfriend belonged to."

"Yeah... Finding out about all this was a nice surprise. I had absolutely no clue."

"The boyfriend got 10 years because the gun he gave the deputy to kill me with was stolen, and he had other stuff related to the gang on him. She got five years for conspiracy and was released after three years."

"I got full custody of my daughter at least. I had to fight her family a bit, but I raised my daughter myself after that. She's a good kid. Hopefully won't take after her mother."

- stootchmaster2

No Missing Puppies To Report

"When I was dumb kid of ten years old, a guy in a s**tty car asked me to hop in and help him find his lost puppy."

"My dumba** was about to get in when my little brother happened to ride by on a bike and started screaming. He probably saved my life."

"The '80s were a weird time."

- Educational_Dust_932

Undercut Rocks Are Not Talked About Enough

"While white water rafting, my raft was going through rapids when I got ejected from the raft and sent underwater. I swam up and hit my helmet on a rock. It was pretty dark and murky. That is when I realized that I had been pushed by the current either underneath a rock outcrop or into an underwater cave, I'm not really sure which."

"Trying my best not to panic, I did the only thing I could think of, use my hands to grip the rock and push myself against the current while kicking. After what felt like an eternity underwater, but it was probably no more than about two or three minutes, I noticed the light was getting brighter, and before I knew it, I had reached the surface."

"Once at the surface, the current of the rapids shot me downstream, and I floated to the nearest bank of the river to collect myself."

"EDIT: It has been pointed out that it is unlikely I was underwater for that length of time. I agree that my memory during such a stressful event is probably unreliable, so I will add that the length of time I was underwater was long enough for the rest of my group to become concerned about my well-being."

"But I would like to say that I don't think I possess any significant ability to hold my breath. I was a fairly fit teenager at the time, but honestly, I think most of you reading this, under those circumstances, would be able to hold your breath for much longer than you thought. Survival instincts are a h**l of a thing."

- SirGrungle

Shocking Vitals

"I was frequently dizzy and lost my appetite. I got admitted to the ER after my potassium levels tested low."

"They gave me an IV and a couple of pills, and then kept me in the hospital for a couple of days until I was at a normal level and were sure that the medication I was on wasn't lowering that significantly."

"The next day, when the doctor came to check on me, he said he did not know anyone with such low potassium in their bloodwork who was still alive."

- Gogo726

For The Love Of The Junker First Cars

"When I was young, my first car was a junker. The driver seat was held upright by a two-by-four wedged against the back seat. If you took it out, the seat went flat below the window line of the car."

"I was working nights and fell asleep behind the wheel and woke up to the roof of my car about two inches from my nose and the firemen betting how many pieces my body was in when. I politely told them to be careful I was still alive."

"I walked away with a few cuts from the glass."

"My car had flipped sideways on a country highway by a bridge ravine and gotten wedged between two trees. Apparently, the other miracle is the way it was wedged, all the gas drained out of the tank so I didn't go kaboom."

- brokesd

An Accident Waiting To Happen

"Unbeknownst to us, the gas burner had been left on for 60 hours or more."

"My daughter bumped into the oven one morning when I was running late and needed her to help grab me something from the kitchen. I almost didn't ask her for help because I felt bad, as she was also busy getting ready for school."

"Her bumping into the oven didn't turn the burner on, it couldn't have, but she made sure to check the burners anyway because of that and that's when I got a picture of the burner I had used the other day, still on low with a barely visible flame, and her asking me, 'Is it supposed to look this way?'"

"...If she hadn't told me, it would have ended badly for us because we don't use that stovetop often at all and I wouldn't have noticed it. From what I understand, the house could have blown up."

- IllustriousDiamond18

A Guardian Angel On Overtime

"Three times come to mind for me."

"First: A drunk driver going 100mph+ hit my vehicle. They were coming down the wrong side of the highway that late evening. I swerved and woke up on the floor of my truck."

"Second: I was working in a restaurant and taking glasses straight out of the dishwasher. I grabbed two out of the rack for a table, and one sheared at the base, fell, and hit my wrist. Three tourniquets at different spots on my arm later, they were able to stop the bleeding. I was wearing a watch with a metal band, and that stopped the glass from cutting further."

"Third: I found out I had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. The doctor said another two or three months without treatment, I’d have been dead. I finished chemo last month and am in remission."

"Anyone know a good gift for their guardian angel? Mine has been working overtime…"

- afootofgravy

It's startling how many accidents many of us go through in our lifetimes and live to tell the tale, but these stories were particularly perplexing, given how close many of these Redditors were to that fateful moment.

Thank goodness to helpful people, exactly right positioning, some beginner's luck, and a little guardian angel magic, these Redditors made it home.