I have 2 occaisons of this.
The first was about 2 months ago.
Ireland recently changed it's laws about learner drivers. It used to be that you got your provisional licence, and got a second after 2 year's. You could drive alone on the 2nd provisional, but for a third, you had to prove you were at least applying for the licence. Recently, the law changed so that you can't drive without a fully licenced driver for at least 2 years in the car with you, no matter what provisional licence you are on. If you drive on your own, €1000 fine. Driving without L plates up, €1000 fine.
I was home alone, post back surgery, with no food or money. ATM's were all further than walking distance so I had to drive to eat that night, about 3 weeks after the law changed.
I was driving my tiny Ford Fiesta, a car that if you hang on for a moment, you can make out whats in front of me if you are patient. I was doing 55 in a 50 kph area, just bridging the gap of 4-5 car lengths in front of me.
Some jackass didn't wait, overtook me and hit the brakes hard to avoid hitting what was in front of me. As this was happening, two guys on bikes are messing around on the sidewalk and one pushes the other right out in front of me. It was a single lane in each direction, so luckily there was nothing coming the other way when I swerved into the oncoming lane to avoid running over the potential Darwin Award winners.
I went home and shook for a while, because it was pretty close to dragging some dumbass along by his head and I'm too soft for jail.
The second involved me being outside a nightclub. Long story short, one of the girls in the group had gotten so drunk she was nearly unconsious and some strange guy decided this was the time to try and feel her up. He didn't take it too well when I told him to go away in a very nice diplomatic fashion.
I'm 5'11'' and 210 pounds and towered over this guy who had a drunken Napoleon conplex and he was up in me ear telling me how he was gonna fucking kill me.
After trying to get him off me with no violence (martial arts training + kicking someones ass = not good situation in court, as people cannot accept it if they get a smack when they deserve it even when they are trying to molest an unconsious woman), what I meant to do was walk him up to the wall by his throat and get him to fuck off.
What I actually did was accidentally take him off his feet with an open hand to the throat, and then he landed with a crack head first on the concrete path, and stopped moving. I don't mind saying, i was scared shitless, I thought I'd killed him. Do I run, do I call an ambulance, what the fuck do I do? It was probably only seconds but it felt like ages until he got up and ran like holy fuck. Seeing as nothing was on the news (Ireland is a small place, pretty much every murder, disappearance or suspicious death makes the papers and tv news), I reckon he was OK in the end.
So, anybody thought they killed or nearly accidentally killed someone? Mine aren't funny, but if yours are, cool.
Posts
Someone decided a box of old 45 records. They looked like a perfect frisbee to toss. We were smashing them against a wall that was behind the dumpster, dropping them inside if we hit it right. Fun AND Productive. We started tossing them around and one missed. It was a jagged, broken, dangerous record of death.
I happened to toss it in the direction of the dumpster without thinking. Maybe I was pissed off about something. I don't know. Someone had been facing me between me and the dumpster. The record of death bounced once on the ground, continued spinning, jumped off the ground, and headed straight towards this person's head. We weren't far away from each other, and as soon as it left my hand I knew it was going to do significant damage if it hit anyone.
I'll never forget watching it fly through the sky as I shouted "WATCH OUT!" helplessly. It looked like a table saw blade heading straight towards the bridge of this person's nose. He moved his head out of the way in a Matrix style back lean duck. The timing was incredible. It missed by millimeters. It was so close to being lodged in his brain that I had a cold few minutes of panic and shock set in. The record skipped and bounced down into a corn field. He ran and picked it up to show me. He thought it was awesome, and wasn't angry at all.
I started cursing and saying, "Holy shit, HOLY SHIT, I could have KILLED YOU!" I think this is the event that broke me out of that "random destruction" phase everyone goes through as a teenager. I just sometimes think about what would have happened if it had hit him.
I'm driving through a small town, very anxious to get home because I can almost smell it. The speed limit in town is already slow, so that's getting on my nerves, but the lady in front of me is purposely going 5 miles under the limit. I know this because as the limit lowers, she keeps going slower to get 5 miles under it. So to say I'm getting angry is an understatement.
So the limit lowers one more time (it seems to be in 5 mph increments), and again, she lowers her speed. At this, I'd had enough. I noticed a gravel shoulder wide enough for my small pickup to pass her on the right, so I gun it and start to pass.
Unfortunately, the gravel ended far too quick and turned into the rain-drenched backyards of several houses. So I'm going about 50 through these yards, my truck going airborne several times, but I can turn or brake, because the grass is like grease, so I just keep moving straight ahead.
About the 3rd jump (and they probably seemed larger than they were, but I did lose my spare tire from out from under my truck, so I know I didn't imagine the whole thing), I realized not only was I out of yard, but that a sharp embankment was right in front of me which led to a busy, four way stop.
As I'm coming up on this four way stop, perpendicular to a line of waiting cars, I see the driver and passenger of the car I'm lined up with. It's a mother and her daughter, and the mom's eyes are wide saucers of fear. Keep in mind, I can't stop, and I'm still going fast, tearing through lawns like a maniac.
Somehow, I get my truck angled so it shoots through the intersection at an angle, barely missing the mom's car. At this point I have so much adrenaline and fear, that I don't even stop, I floor it and try to get away from any cops that may have been called.
I make it the rest of the way home just fine, and as my brother opens up my passenger side door to help bring my bags in, everything in the truck just falls out onto the driveway, having been shook up by the ordeal. My dad shaking his head at my apparent lack of organization helped break me out of the shock I was still going through.
Needless to say, that got my road rage in check ever since (that was about 10 years ago or so). What a dumb thing to have almost killed someone over. I never did tell my family, or my friends, because I'm unforgivably ashamed by it. But at least no one got hurt and I learned something. So there you are.
May be different arround you though.
He ran at me and I aikido'd him, throwin him wayyy out into the sand, close to the pavement.
I realized the next day that the dude could have died.
I didn't though, and my brain is fully intact.
I had started walking and climbing at this point, and wandered out of the house and into the driveway. Seeing the driver's side door wide open, I climbed on up, and began pretending I was driving, unbeknownst to dad working underneath, eventually knocking the steering-wheel-mounted shifter into neutral.
The car sitting at the top of an inclined driveway, it began to fall into the road, with dad frantically pulling some matrix shit to roll out of the way in time.
That would have been nice to grow up with the knowledge of.... "Hey, you killed your dad as a baby! With a car!"
I was standing about four feet in front of the tee box and behind the guy's back. It heeled off the driver and to this day I'm still surprised I was able to block it, but I got my arms up in front of my face and it nailed the side of my wrist instead of my nose. My reaction was "Owwww" but everyone else just stood there for a few seconds trying to wrap their head around what just happened.
I had a big ole bump on my wrist for a couple of weeks.
There was a single tire hanging over the edge like in a TV show or something. We pushed my car back into the road and drove, scared shitless.
Needless to say, I drove a different way home.
In 2005 I went to QuakeCon with 5 other friends. We took 2 vehicles to fit all of the people and computers (3 people per car), and one of the vehicles was mine. On the way back, I was letting one of my friends drive. We were on the interstate somewhere in Texas, and he was going 5 mph or so above the speed limit in the left-hand lane. Suddenly, this Infiniti comes flying up the right-hand lane just as my friend is about to pass someone and cuts us off with MAYBE half of a car-length to spare.
Some curse words are let lose, but my friend is a much more level-headed driver than I. He continues at the speed he was going, when the Infiniti SLOWS DOWN in the right-hand lane behind another driver. Just as we're about to pass him, he cuts us off AGAIN.
At this point I'm fuming. I decide that my friend is being far too passive, and that I need to drive.. So I make him turn on the cruise control and switch spots with me at 70 mph down the interstate. (The first time I almost killed everyone in the car..)
After I got behind the wheel, I floored it to catch up with the Infiniti.. I was in full on road rage mode. I didn't have to go far, as he was tailing a Semi at about 10 below the speed limit in the right-hand lane. As I pulled up to him, I slowed down to a speed maybe 1 mph faster than the Semi. It took me about 10 minutes to pass it. After I passed him, I put on my signal and merged into the right-hand lane. Of course the Infiniti blew past me as soon as I did this..
BUT, I wasn't done.. I caught up to him again and got into the left-hand lane right next to him, then slammed on the brakes and swerved behind him. After a few minutes of this, I decide to just go ahead and pass him.
About 15 minutes later, I noticed him in my rear-view mirror. He was right behind me, and stayed behind me no matter what lane I was in. I called my friends in the other vehicle and told them I would be getting off at the next exit. Sure enough, the Infiniti followed me off of the interstate, with my friends right behind him. I pulled into the left-turn lane and waited for the light.. As soon as it turned I went about half-way through the turn, then FLOORED it and turned right to go straight through the intersection. The Infiniti completed the left turn, as did my friends.. As I found a parking lot to hide in, my friends called me and said that this guy drove through a median just after the left turn and doubled back to find me..
tl;dr - My Road Rage (after switching drivers at 70 mph down the interstate) pissed off some guy who chased my friends and I during a road trip.
So, clever me, says "I know how to get her to go away." My friend has a toy bow and arrow set that has a reasonable bit of power behind it, and I realise that I can shoot one of the arrows through the lock. So I set up the bow and arrow with the tip of the arrow resting inside the lock, and we wait for his sister to come back.
RATTLE RATTLE RATTLE
"Now!" says my friend, and I fire. There is a scream.
Turns out that his sister was at that moment peering through the keyhole. IF she'd had her eye open, the arrow would surely have gone straight through into her brain. As it was, she blinked at the perfect moment, and the kiddy arrow hit with enough force to go through the eyelid but only scratch the eyeball itself.
Cue much screaming, calling the parents, trips to hospital. I was never invited over again.
Interestingly enough, that reminded me of a time when I was a kid playing lawn darts with another kid. Yeah... Not sure if I was throwing them right or not, but I threw one when the other kid was downfield and actually hit him in the head with it. I remember all the adults came running and carried him into the house to help him out. I'm definitely a LOT more careful now...
When I was learning to drive I was going over an overpass when a clearly mentally infirm man stepped out into the road to pick up some bright orange thing right in front of me. Swerved like a madman and narrowly missed liquidating his head.
edit: what's it like in those places, if you don't mind me asking?
Got you beat, I accidentily hit a ball to the right of a driving range and it went over the net that was way to low and hit a guy square in the back. For some reason the tea box was literally right next to the driving range only up like 20-30 feet. Decent shot though musta been at least a hundred yards with a wedge.
When we realized that the power from a car battery wasn't enough for more than a feeble spark, we decided to splice apart one end of an extension cord and solder each of the leads to one of the rods, and plug the other end into the wall socket.
Unfortunately, the difference between a car battery and a wall socket are profound. Additionally, these were uncovered rods of graphite, not the thin pencil leads that are both mixed with clay and sheathed in wood.
My friend, who was most experienced in electronics, had one of the rods in his hand and was about to pick up the other. He was not wearing any sort of protective gloves.
We all collectively realized that he was about to electrocute himself when his other hand was about an inch from picking up the other rod. He promptly freaked the hell out and ran out of the garage and into the driveway, where he collapsed for a moment in what looked like a panic attack.
This lady that my dad once played with has us both beat. They were playing ahead of a group that didn't know how to wait or yell for, so every time they moved up to their second shot, a ball would land nearby. Eventually, one lands right next to this lady, who gets so pissed that she turns around and hits the thing right back onto the t-box, which would have at least scared the crap out of the next guy to t up.
One thing in the world made me angriest of all: my girlfriend at the time. It wasn't anything specific, but we would normally end up fighting over pretty much nothing. I have no idea why we dated as long as we did. Maybe she saw something in me that I never could. But damn, just being around her made me as angry as hell. If I was driving at the time, well...
I was visiting her out at her school in PA, and we were driving around at night looking for somewhere decent to eat. And we started fighting (again), and I chose to express my rage through driving. I was running stop signs, speeding, and anything else I thought I could get away with. So, I take a left turn fast and wide. And there's a group of kids standing on the sidewalk on the corner next to the road I was turning onto. One of the kids was standing juuust in the street and I swear, if the woman next to him had not wanked him back, I would have hit him. I was ****ing inches from killing a little kid with my car.
The worst part, the absolute WORST part, was that this did nothing to curb my anger nor my poor driving skills. Nor did the subsequent mental breakdown after she rightly dumped my ass. It was another year until I finally got my anger under control and managed to start driving like a rational human being.
Arch,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_goGR39m2k
As if you couldn't see where this was going...
Anyway, one day when I was there he wasn't paying attention and held on the exposed wires unstead of the rubber when he "plugged" it in. He was under the desk, so I heard his head go 'thudthudthudthud' against the desk. Somehow he managed to let go... man now that I think about it the amount of times that kid nearly offed himself because of his own craziness was amazing.
Oh wait, I think I nearly killed someone once... my friend was swinging from a bar, trying to swing as high as possible. I gave him a slight push to help him, and his feet caught on the bar behind him. It wasn't much of a height but he landed face first and bit through his top lip. Our playground was more jagged rocks than anything else so it could have ended worse. He swore it wasn't my push that caused it though, but I know better.
STEAM
Well one day, I got pissed and smacked my brother on the top of his head with my fist. He got mad and took a swing, but I jumped back. He ran off and I laughed. Then he came back with a steak knife. Chased me around. Nearly stabbed me in the neck, but I slammed the door to my bedroom right before he got there. Never told my parents though...I guess b/c I instigated it, but goddamn, I might not be here if I'd been that much slower.
When I was about 13/14, me and my brother were making some chips (fries) and we left the fat heating up for too long. It needed changing anyway so we thought, "Why not just throw it away instead of waiting for it to cool down. As a joke, I told my brother (18mths younger) to pour it down the sink.
And he did.
Fortunately, he's a drummer so he has pretty strong wrists and managed to keep hold of the pan. He got a face full of steam and was inches away from pouring a pan full of almost boiling oil down his chest. He didn't really redeem himself when I said to pour it away in the garden and he walked to the centre of the lawn and poured it out. The grass never regrew and my parents just put a slab down and a pot plant in the end.
You'd be surprised at how many people had an almost (if not exactly) identical experience as a kid. I had one too, at about the same age.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
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On accident: tooling around with a Tavor... guy bumped into me, hard, on accident. We're talking inches, here, from the stray bullet hitting someone's torso.
Mine was similar. It was my mother though. The car was running while she was talking to the baby sitter. The car was an automatic with the gear selector on the steering column. It was basically just a piece of metal covered by a plastic knob. The knob was removable, I would take it off and play with it. My father had recently super glued the knob back on so that it was no longer removable. I was 2 and was not told. I kept pulling on it and eventually put the car into drive. I missed my mother (barely) but I could not have missed the huge garage door in front of me. Fortunately, the owners had good insurance.
PSN : Bolthorn
Yeah I did something stupid like that. My mom parked on a dirt hill in my dad's car to run inside somewhere real fast, and left the door open. I climbed in the driver seat and pretended I was driving. Knocked the car out of park and rolled backwards down the hill, with my foot hanging out the door and rubbing on the ground trying to slow it down. SLAM! Into a damn tree, and the open door swung into my leg.
The driver side taillights were broken and I had a massive bruise on my leg.
We were playing tag during lunch and had the great idea to sit on the wall, if the person who was chasing us came to tag us all we had to do was jump off the wall into the lower playground and we were safe. It was me and my friend Michael sitting on the wall at the time, he jumped, I was wondering why, realised it was because the chaser was about to get us and went to jump myself. At the same time I went to jump I got caught so I tried to stop the jump to take up my role as chaser. By trying to stop the jump I turned it more into a fall and had no control on the landing, Michael had landed pretty much below me somehow and was in a leap frog position as he was getting up. I landed square on his shoulders, legs to each side of his head, driving his face, hard into the tarmac.
I shudder when I think of that as I'm pretty sure that could have killed him if not seriously injured him. Michael came away with a chipped tooth, the inside of his front lip shredded to fuck and his face scraped up a bit.
Heh, wow. I, too, had something similar when I was about 4 years old. The driveway at our first house was kind of this circular dirt drive that sloped down a slight hill. My dad's (manual) truck was up at the top and my mom's car was at the bottom. I was in the truck, playing like I was driving, and pulled the truck into neutral, where I proceeded to coast down the hill and smack into the back of my mom's car, where I then fell out of the open door.
So she's having a blast and I get the idea to make her go really fast by pulling the thing all the way back, without considering the fact that a three year old probably can't hold on too well. I let go, the thing launches her into the air, and she does a mid air flip before landing on the gravel. She was mostly alright, but did develop a life long fear of playgrounds. Though, considering how dangerous some of the stuff they let kids play with is, it was probably for the best.
I of course got in quite a bit of trouble. It didn't help matters either that I found the sight of a flying baby so ridiculous it was all I could do to keep from laughing while being scolded by many adults.
Another time, years and years later, me and a friend of mine were in science class goofing off. That day's class had been on electricity and measuring current, so we were divided into groups, with each group holding their own electrometer or voltometer or something like that - a device to measure current. My pal and I start to talk about our brains, and how, to our understanding, signals in the brain are essentially electric currents. Curious and stupid, I put both ends of the meter-thing to my friends head, one at each temple. My friend felt an abrupt shock to his head and I immediately pulled away horrified.
Also, though one specific time doesn't come to mind, my family's always rough-housed at family events, and as the oldest I've had the privilege of being able to toss my cousins around as I've seen fit. My favourite cousins are noticeably big (read: not fat, but tall and muscular) and they've always loved to fight, so that's just what we do. If I had a dollar for every time we'd nearly knocked each other into something sharp, hard, and basically potentially harmful, I'd be a rich man. I once nearly tossed my cousin head first into the sharp edge of an hardwood table, and one of them nearly put me through a glass table.
So we were out in the woods, hacking away at some scrubs with machetes (I forget why. Probably boredom?). Anyway, my super 'way-too-excited-about-the-task' friend takes a crazy fast, strong horizontal stroke at some sapling. He feels the weight of the machete suddenly change.
It took us a moment, but the blade of the machete had swung free of the handle (cheap machetes ftw) and made a beeline for my friend Shorty. It stuck into a big tree about 4-inches over Shorty's head (Shorty had earned his nickname). After that, we decided it was time to turn in for the night.
Yeah, my little brother got whalloped on the head. He just got a nasty bump but depending on the rock it could have been much worse.
That could have ended badly.
STEAM
Either this is far more prevalent than I imagined, or YOU ARE MY SISTER.