What is the closest you've come to meeting your maker?

Railwaycat · 5 Jun 2026

Tonight, at approximately 22.00, my wife and I were travelling home from watching a play at Belper on the A610 heading towards the A38 at Ripley, Derbyshire - slightly curved wide single carriageway - when a car suddenly appeared out of the gloom (old Astra I think), heading in the opposite direction....fully on our side of the road!!! My wife braked and my hand went for the steering wheel but luckily for us he pulled over at the last second. No other cars around so what on earth he was doing there g-d knows.

We both agreed that that was the closest we've both ever come to death, because no way would we have survived that (he was going at a fair pace)

Anyone else had a similar escape?

RailUK Forums

Royston Vasey · 5 Jun 2026

Well, it's railway related actually, at the age about 9. Standing on one side of the road bridge over Tyne Yard as an HST approached, and as it passed underneath, I turned and ran across the road without looking, to see it through. A car missed me by feet as I ran, they braked to a halt but not until it was well past me, I hadn't even given them time to brake towards me at all. They opened the car door, a woman shouted "you nearly killed yourself" and they drove away, and she was right!

It was and remains a national speed limit road.

Burned on my memory. I never did that again and still think of it from time to time.

brad465 · 5 Jun 2026

In April 2014 I had a relatively minor cycling accident where a car knocked me off by entering a roundabout I was already on (so was 100% his fault), and while I had only a few scrapes, my carbon bike frame cracked, which is an instant write-off. While my insurance claim was being made and processed, I used my second road bike, but while getting used to it, it was clearly not as powerful brake-wise, so while out riding, I was about to rear-end a small pickup truck in a queue of traffic infront of me. In order to avoid hitting them, I swerved to the right to go into a pub car park at this point, crossing the other lane, where I was a split-second infront of an oncoming car and just cleared it, beeping very loudly in the process. Had that car been a few metres ahead of its actual position, it would have collided with me full speed which by all probability would have been it for me.

Suffice to say the two incidents on back-to-back days were a huge mental shock, but somehow I swiftly recovered mentally and my second bike saved around 2,000 otherwise lost training miles while I waited for my primary bike's replacement to be covered by the insurer.

dorsetdesiro · 6 Jun 2026

Choking on strong brandy/whisky filled chocolates at Christmas about 20 years ago. Very stupid of me for swallowing them too quickly and went into the wrong hole, my lungs were really burning up. I was on the floor fighting for my breath, my vision becoming fuzzier and shrinking like a light at end of tunnel.

I kept coughing and coughing, determined with not passing out, violently until it all came back up then my vision gradually faded back to normal then I got up on my feet and thought what the hell was that?? The chocolates ended up in the bin. Silly I know, that's the closest experience for me

spyinthesky · 6 Jun 2026

I suppose I have had a few occasions during military operations but in the moment I don’t remember that thought crossing my mind.
On my 21st birthday we came under a mortar attack with the rounds getting ever closer. When they stopped, all I can remember is shouting “You couldn’t even make it 21”

AlterEgo · 6 Jun 2026

I had two strokes in my 20s which was a bit sketchy.

Magdalia · 6 Jun 2026

In my commuting life:

passed through Kings Cross underground less than 3 hours before the fire
passed over the track at Hatfield the evening before the derailment
passed over the track at Potters Bar the evening before the derailment

Then there's the medical episode where an ambulance arriving only 2 minutes after the 999 call saved my life.

THC · 6 Jun 2026

I was stabbed in the chest when I was 16, at an under-18s disco in Watford. I did nothing to provoke an attack - my attacker was a meat-headed idiot trying to impress his friends by using his knife. Long story short, I ended up being rushed into hospital. After an emergency procedure the surgeon told me that had the knife entered a few millimetres either side - it hit a rib - I would be dead. Life can depend on some pretty fine margins.

My assailant? Given three months' youth custody. A joke of a sentence. Me? Lived with the trauma ever since. Grateful though for every day of the forty-odd years that have passed in the meantime.

THC

Peter Mugridge · 6 Jun 2026

While on board during a ( pre-arranged ) performance flying demonstration in a Bell 206L Longranger with all but one of the seven seats occupied - and coming within a couple of feet of clipping a forgotten power line at the northern edge of the grounds we were demonstrating over - just for good measure, there was a cesspit just past that wire.

Pilot spotted it at literally the last possible second to avoid it when we were doing a high speed low pass...

This was on 29th April 1989.

One other forum member was a witness to that!!

alex397 · 6 Jun 2026

In Canterbury I was crossing the road at a Pelican crossing, at a green man. A car continued at speed though and only just missed me. It appeared it wasn’t a mistake either, and they just didn’t want to stop.
Perhaps I was just a naive student who assumed it would always be safe to cross with a green man and I think I was looking at my phone while crossing. From that time onwards, I always look at the cars to make sure they’ve actually seen the red light and are coming to a stop.

This didn’t happen to me, but it is believed my Mum, as a child, was on the train that ended up crashing at Moorgate in 1975, but they alighted at Old Street to attend Moorfields Eye Hospital. I’m not sure how completely true that is (I wonder if it really was the train they missed) but they would have been using that line on that day in the morning.

Shimbleshanks · 6 Jun 2026

I came off a pushbike on a muddy country lane about 15 years ago at around 15mph and cracked my head on the tarmac. Fortunately it was one of the occasions when I decided to wear my helmet (I didn't always in those days; I do now.) It might not have been fatal but it would have been extremely nasty. (The fall was enough to break my collarbone.) Lying unconscious in the middle of a road - albeit a very quiet one - might not have been too healthy either.

Then about eight years ago for reasons I can't now quite understand I acquired an inflatable kayak. I took it out for a first trip off a deserted beach and got about 50 yards or so out to sea. When I turned it around to go back, I found I couldn't - the tide or the wind was too strong. I was faced with the choice of staying in the kayak and drifting out into the shipping lanes or jumping out and hoping that my swimming progress to shore would be better than my paddling. I chose the latter; fortunately I had a lifejacket on so I was able to take it in easy stages and float when I got tired. I was quite exhausted when I finally made it onto the sand.

Bantamzen · 6 Jun 2026

Just last year I was on a bus from Northwich to my home village, travelling along the A559 around some tight and blind bends when a car appeared on the wrong side of the road on one of these blind bends trying to overtake a cyclist. The bus driver literally leapt on the brakes, and luckily being a fairly new one it came to a shuddering stop as the car headed at us when sideways trying to avoid out bus. Pretty terrifying stuff, as I almost got flung from the higher seating towards to rear. Thankfully my subconscious reactions meant I'd grabbed a pole and so only clattered my knees into the seat in front, and not propelled towards to front of the bus. Needless to say many bad words were aimed at the car driver, who amazingly didn't seem to feel he'd done anything particularly wrong!!

However the closest I ever came was many years ago when I was in the depths of depression. Following the breakup of a long term relationship, and finding myself ending up living in a grotty hotel, I came very, very close to taking my own life. I won't go into details, but I was at the very brink, I don't entirely understand why I didn't go through with it, but something stopped me at the very last moment.

It's why mental health is so important, and yet sadly still so underrated. Thankfully those days are long behind me, but I know I'm far from the only one who has felt like this. Life can be extremely overdemanding sometimes, so it's important to understand that literally anyone could be going through something like this and not even show it.

Welly · 6 Jun 2026

Peter Mugridge said:
While on board during a ( pre-arranged ) performance flying demonstration in a Bell 206L Longranger with all but one of the seven seats occupied - and coming within a couple of feet of clipping a forgotten power line at the northern edge of the grounds we were demonstrating over - just for good measure, there was a cesspit just past that wire.

Pilot spotted it at literally the last possible second to avoid it when we were doing a high speed low pass...

This was on 29th April 1989.

One other forum member was a witness to that!!

I remember your flight over the grounds but not the evasion move.

In my case, I was riding my bicycle out of my drive and waved to my next door neighbour but she grimaced. Next thing a van had come round the corner too fast and only just missing me!

Cdd89 · 6 Jun 2026

Meningitis when I was two. Apparently I was hospitalised and parents were told by doctors I was "90% certain" not to make it.

No memory of it, which is just as well I suppose.

Acey · 6 Jun 2026

Slipping while crossing the Aonach Eagach ridge at a particularly narrow part ( luckily I didn't sky dive ) and treading on the juice rail while carrying out shunting duties in Grove Park Depot !

70014IronDuke · 6 Jun 2026

THC said:
I was stabbed in the chest when I was 16, at an under-18s disco in Watford. I did nothing to provoke an attack - my attacker was a meat-headed idiot trying to impress his friends by using his knife. Long story short, I ended up being rushed into hospital. After an emergency procedure the surgeon told me that had the knife entered a few millimetres either side - it hit a rib - I would be dead. Life can depend on some pretty fine margins.

My assailant? Given three months' youth custody. A joke of a sentence. Me? Lived with the trauma ever since. Grateful though for every day of the forty-odd years that have passed in the meantime.

THC

Oooooch. That really is a nasty one.

Congratulations on surviving. Mine is far more prosaic.

In the Pictures of Matchstickmen summer of '69 (tho possibly 68) I used to go fishing in a lake about ¾ mile north of where I lived in a village. (Hardly anyone ever fished this lake, which had lots of carp, you could see the b*gg#rs, but I never caught a single one!)

Outside the last houses on this road, you might wait for 10 or even 15 minutes in those days for a car to come by during normal waking hours. Nor would anyone normally be walking on the road past the village, the next dwelling was probably 3 miles away.

One evening, I packed up my rods and began walking down the road. It was probably about 22.00, and just gone dark. On the way back, there was a bend to the left, not a sharp one, and there were no hedges, the bend turning the road maybe 35%, more or less directly in a southerly direction.

I was walking on the road (no pavement, of course) on the bend and on the right hand side, so facing any traffic that might come towards me, when I heard a car coming from behind.

Now the road was not very wide, but perfectly capable of allowing two cars to pass, so with nothing coming towards me, I could stay on the road quite safely, though near the verge, naturally. I certainly never bothered to even look behind me, there was simply no logical need.

But at the last second, something told me, step onto the verge, just in case - which I did. The next moment, TWO cars, one overtaking the other, roared past me, the overtaking vehicle passing maybe a foot from me doing probably 50-55 mph.

With the traffic levels on that road, I doubt even once per year that a car would overtake another on that bend. Equally, the driver of the overtaking car would have not imagine meeting a pedestrian on the other side of the road, neither in daylight or at night.

It was reckless driving though. I'm not even sure if he/she saw me, but if I'd stayed on the road, I'm 98% certain I'd have made a mess of his offside wing, but he'd have made a bigger mess of me.

RT4038 · 6 Jun 2026

Various incidents (armed heist, petrol bomb, road accident, aero equipment failure), so here is just another one:

Not in this country but, whilst driving a Leyland Victory Mk. 2 single decker bus along the freeway at about 50mph, conveying a returning Sunday School outing - I remember vaguely a vehicle (car or pick up) overtaking and then a loud bang and the windscreen smashed into a million pieces, with many of those pieces forcibly coming into contact with my head. Fortunately I had glasses on, but the blood from cuts to my forehead and skull soon started to run into my eyes and congeal. I managed to bring the bus to a stand safely on the hard shoulder. One of the passengers was a senior officer of St. John Ambulance and had a comprehensive First Aid kit with them; they cleaned up the wounds and put a bandage round my forehead. After a cup of tea from a flask, and clearing away the worst of the glass fragments, I drove the bus slowly back the 15 miles or so to the Church, dropped off the load and returned to the Depot, no mean feat in a 30C afternoon heat trying to dry my eyes out on the way!

On arrival there the staff from the Engineering Dept. came to inspect the bus. Apart from the questions as to why laminated glass was not fitted (which prompted a check of all the fleet and a few dozen replacements), one mechanic climbed into the cab and pointed out the bullet hole, complete with wedged bullet, in the rear cab sheet just behind where my right ear would have been.......

Sorcerer · 6 Jun 2026

Mid-20s, was showing signs of hyperglycemia caused by diabetes including vomiting, frequent urination, unquenchable thirst. GP wasn't very good at responding, finally ended up giving in a urine test showing high levels of ketones and was sent straight to hospital, taken to high care ward and put on a drip. I didn't realise it at the time, but what I have been told afterwards is that if action was taken any later I may well have slipped into a coma and died.

Farang · 6 Jun 2026

Crossing the road with my ears full of wax. I stepped out from the traffic island after checking in the direction vehicles should have been coming from. I could faintly hear the sound of a horn, but the first I saw of the car travelling at speed the wrong way down the carraigeway was after it swerved to avoid me.

3141 · 6 Jun 2026

Maybe "at death's door" rather than meeting my maker, but there are three occasions where without modern medical treatments I'd probably have gone through it, sooner rather than later.

The first was in November 2000, when I had a heart attack - a myocardial infarction (MI). It was probably a moderate incident, so far as any heart attack is "moderate", but I received treatment quickly and I've been having various medications ever since. I've climbed Snowdon four times since then, so modern treatments are good.

In December 2018 I had a bad case of pancreatitis. For various reasons it wasn't diagnosed until six days after the initial symptoms. I heard one doctor describe the CT scan result as "one of the worst cases of an inflamed pancreas that I've seen", and another told me several times that my pancreas "looked like a bomb had hit it". I was in hospital for four weeks, including ten days in the High Dependency Unit (a step below Intensive Care). Christmas dinner 2018 arrived via a tube up my nostril and another tube into a vein in my neck.

In September 2021 I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. I knew I should have had a check much sooner, and by the time I did the cancer had reached an advanced stage. Two drugs called Zoladex and Enzalutamide have kept it under control. (There are probably others on here who take the same things.) I have a blood test every twelve weeks through which the situation is monitored. A few months ago the oncologist mentioned that back in 2021 "it was aggressive", and I got the impression that at that time he didn't expect he'd still be talking to me in 2026.

Half a century ago, or less, at least one of these events would have finished me off. I'm fortunate that twenty first century medical treatments are so effective.

Dave61 · 6 Jun 2026

Back to the 1970's for this one when I was not even a teenager, family annual holiday in car to North Wales at Colwyn Bay (it used to be Abergele via the Saturday holiday maker special train and the holiday coaches parked at the station but that is another story.)
Mum driving, dad navigating (!) , me and sister in rear of car (no seatbelts) , single carrigaway road solid with traffic in both ways coming to/from North Wales. Dad sees radio telescope near road and exclaims "Is that Jodrell Bank?" (we were miles away from it !). Mum looks over turn steering wheel slightly, car hits curb and is thrown across the road into the oncoming traffic before mum hauls it back again - this happened at the one and only spot where there was a gap in the oncoming traffic.

cb a1 · 6 Jun 2026

Bantamzen said:
However the closest I ever came was many years ago when I was in the depths of depression. Following the breakup of a long term relationship, and finding myself ending up living in a grotty hotel, I came very, very close to taking my own life. I won't go into details, but I was at the very brink, I don't entirely understand why I didn't go through with it, but something stopped me at the very last moment.

It's why mental health is so important, and yet sadly still so underrated. Thankfully those days are long behind me, but I know I'm far from the only one who has felt like this. Life can be extremely overdemanding sometimes, so it's important to understand that literally anyone could be going through something like this and not even show it.

As the saying goes, "there but for the grace of god, go I." I was luckier in that I only had to manage a week in a Travelodge before I got a flat. I have and on occasion suffer from depression.

At work, I make a very big thing about mental health. As a team leader, I am very open about my own mental health challenges.

neilmc · 6 Jun 2026

Was driving from Manchester to Aldershot for a wedding early one April Sunday, and we'd had snow. However the M56 and M6 were OK, I just drove slightly slower than normal although the roads were clear. That is, until we hit the boundary of the West Midlands where the lying snow on the motorway hadn't been cleared. Just a few minutes earlier there'd been another accident with a car abandoned in the fast lane, and I couldn't avoid it. Car written off, broke my glasses but me wearing a seat belt not injured.

I seem to recall in about 1968 bunking Longsight depot and walking along a single line between the depot building and another wall when a class 24 came whizzing down the line, fortunately we all managed to dive out of the way into a gap. On an organised visit of London sheds a couple of years later we went to Selhurst and around 40 boys had to cross the electrified third rail in the yard, no incidents but the potential was enormous!

BeeBus · 6 Jun 2026

I had one incident in a car at university. It was a Hillman Imp driven by a friend and we went probably a little too quickly round a not very sharp bend and the back end just went and we did the fastest three-point turn I've ever done in my life. I was in the front passenger seat and had anything been coming the other way it would not have been good for me. Fortunately there wasn't and the damage was limited to some damaged steering so we hobbled back. In any case I don't think the driver was up to going at speed and it was interesting observing the effects of shock which I hadn't really experienced. I didn't feel anything, strangely, but I wonder whether that was partly shock as well?

The other incident occurred a bit earlier, in around 1961. A family trip to Blackpool during the Illuminations saw my sister and me waiting for a tram near the tower. As the railcoach approached I spotted a little flame coming from the trolley base. The trolley cable was obviously damaged because the next thing I knew a shower of sparks shot in every direction. We didn't think and ran away across the promenade to safety giving no consideration to any traffic that might be passing. Somehow, we didn't come into contact with any of the many cars I'm sure were there. The strange thing about this experience is that I became very much involved with Blackpool tram engineering almost twenty years later.

Strathclyder · 7 Jun 2026

I may have told this story before elsewhere on the fourm in the past, but my closest scrape with death (other than my premature birth) was coming within literal inches of being run over by a speeding bus in the winter of 2007/08 (was 11 at the time).

This happened after school one evening that winter, so it had gotten dark ridiculously early. I was using the zebra crossing - so red lights for the traffic and to emphazise that I wasn't just darting out in front of traffic - at the top of Clydebank Shopping Centre on Kilbowie Road (just down from Singer station) with my mum just a pace or two behind me. Was only a few steps across when I happened to look to my right and all I could see was nothing but the front panel and blaring headlights of a bus that hadn't stopped or even slowed for the red lights.

That one moment still lives rent-free in my head, over 18 years later. I momentarily froze up in terror, but my mum yanked me back onto the pavement by the literal scruff of the neck with a literal second to spare, with the bus not even slowing down, never mind stopping, after charging through the crossing. If my mum had waited just half a second longer to pull me back onto the pavement, there's a very high chance I would've been killed on impact. When we got to the other side of the road, I was a shaking, tearful mess as you can well imagine as the shock gave way to the realization of just how close I'd come to being hit started to sink in. Luckily, a passing couple stopped and gave us the buses' registration plate and the police were called when we eventually got home, who came to take a few details. Nothing ever came of it as far as I'm aware, unfortunately.

This had happened less than a hundred yards down from where a lad my age had been fatally struck by a bus a few years prior, which always plays on my mind whenever I think about this brush with death and how close I came to sharing his fate.

Iskra · 7 Jun 2026

I was a passenger in a vehicle on a country lane when a car ploughed straight into my side of the car at around, but possibly more than 60mph- the registration of the car that impacted spelt ‘Mr zoom.’ I briefly saw it coming and ushered a choice word. I thought it was the end, but I had no time to dwell on matters. There was a deafening noise and the car was filled with a choking dust and I blacked-out. The vehicle I was in was lifted off the road, spun around in the air and came to rest in a drainage ditch a modest distance away from where we’d started. I’d lost consciousness, but came around dazed and confused a few minutes later to a surreal scene of horses running loose, armed response police being first on scene and the sound of a helicopter arriving. The fire brigade cut me out of the vehicle, and the sight of a massive circular saw operating inches from my leg had the effect of waking me up somewhat. Sadly, I didn’t get to go in the air ambulance, but instead got taken in the road ambulance. Miraculously, I ended up with just 3 broken ribs, lots of small glass cuts, a lacerated pancreas and a hell of a a lot of bruising down one side. I couldn’t walk for a day and I spent 3 nights in hospital, but overall it was a pretty happy outcome considering the physics of the situation.

What I learned:

- Modern cars are amazing
- The human body is amazing
- The NHS are amazing
- It massively enhanced my appreciation for life and for simple things such as being able to walk regularly. Although, I think some of this has now worn off as the years have passed and I’m now just back to normal levels if life appreciation
- Not to be overly concerned about death

Falcon1200 · 7 Jun 2026

Driving home on the M8 in Glasgow over the Kingston Bridge crossing the Clyde. Lanes converge here, right in front of me a lorry changed lanes from left to right, striking a car which spun round and ended up in the far right lane facing the wrong way. By sheer good fortune this happened to be a (very rare) quiet moment on the motorway and neither I, not any other vehicle, was caught up in the crash.

DerekC · 7 Jun 2026

At 7:01 pm on February 9th 1996 an IRA bomb was detonated at South Quay in Docklands. My desk was in the corner of the 2nd floor of the building nearest to the blast. I had planned to stay in London and work late because of some testing on the Saturday morning. It was cancelled at about 5:30 pm, so I packed up and went home, leaving at about 6:15. Sadly two people were killed in the shop below my office window. A couple of days later three of us were allowed to walk along the DLR viaduct to check out the damage to the railway. I still have a vivid picture in my mind of what it looked like - windows smashed, cladding hanging down, glass still falling from buildings. Little bits of the truck bomb lying about, all ringed and numbered by the forensic people. And my hi-vi jacket lying on the ground under the office windows. It gave a glimpse into what modern wars must be like.

For some reason, what made me more angry than the IRA was that when we finally got back into the building to recover possessions anything worth nicking had gone, presumably taken by whoever had made the building safe by installing scaffolding bars to prevent you falling out of the smashed full length glass.

AlterEgo · 7 Jun 2026

DerekC said:
At 7:01 pm on February 9th 1996 an IRA bomb was detonated at South Quay in Docklands. My desk was in the corner of the 2nd floor of the building nearest to the blast. I had planned to stay in London and work late because of some testing on the Saturday morning. It was cancelled at about 5:30 pm, so I packed up and went home, leaving at about 6:15. Sadly two people were killed in the shop below my office window. A couple of days later three of us were allowed to walk along the DLR viaduct to check out the damage to the railway. I still have a vivid picture in my mind of what it looked like - windows smashed, cladding hanging down, glass still falling from buildings. Little bits of the truck bomb lying about, all ringed and numbered by the forensic people. And my hi-vi jacket lying on the ground under the office windows. It gave a glimpse into what modern wars must be like.

For some reason, what made me more angry than the IRA was that when we finally got back into the building to recover possessions anything worth nicking had gone, presumably taken by whoever had made the building safe by installing scaffolding bars to prevent you falling out of the smashed full length glass.

My father has an almost identical story about the South Quay bomb other than he didn't walk across the viaduct. He was working on the Jubilee Line Extension at the time. He had stayed late at work in the office and was evacuated by the police prior to the explosion. The two guys that were killed owned a corner shop and had returned as they were worried about the shop being looted. Tragic.

nw1 · 7 Jun 2026

Bike accident some years ago when I was unwisely cycling while really stressed and annoyed at something that had happened at work (one of those occasions when you're working all hours God sends and still people are not happy).

An unwise over-rapid descent off a mountain in France when a thunderstorm rather rapidly developed when I was at altitude - I slid down a snow slope, was frightening while it was going on, but in reality safe due to the gradient becoming shallow before it hit rock.

An actual unprovoked attack by some random person in an area I considered safe - I'm guessing it was someone on drugs. They didn't seem interested in stealing anything, they uttered some incoherent rubbish that I'd disrespected their father, or something.

As a child, for some bizarre reason sticking my hand into a bedside lamp without a bulb and a live current. I got a tingle, nothing more thankfully.

What is the closest you've come to meeting your maker?

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