I've had more 'I nearly died' moments cycling to work than I ever did when I was in, and they were all to the soundtrack of "Sorry mate, I didnae see ye".

Six-foot-five, sixteen-and-a-half-stone me, covered in day-glo clothing and with both fixed and flashing lights and reflective strips for dark times, travelling in a dead straight line down a well-lit road where I had right of way. And they didn't see me.

We need to have a serious look at the eyesight requirement for getting a license, although I suppose there's an outside chance they really meant "my head's up my arrse and I never bothered looking properly before pulling out".

Originally Posted by Markintime

Originally Posted by Gren

Originally Posted by Forks

It was pretty funny actually. Head on collision with cars going 70mph+ wouldn't have been so funny though. Wasn't even my fault for once, the asshole was in my lane overtaking!

Luckily I managed to break and swerve without running myself off the road and into trees. But there can't have been more than half a metre between us! I don't think airbags and seat belts would have saved me at that speed though.

Is it natural to just laugh at a situation like when you could have seriously been in a whole load of trouble if things had been different by just a few cms?

Anyone else had some close calls on the roads or whatever?

Almost identical situation, about 12 years ago on a country road near a town called March.
I didnt crap myself, but I did have a very odd and sudden wave of heat go across my whole body, never felt that since, very odd.

A lot of dykes round there lining the roads as well.

are you sure they are dykes?? some women just look butch

Wrote my old R6 off when a dozy women pulled out in front of me at a roundabout. Flew across the bonnet of her people carrier and landed on my arrse, whackin me nuts on the tank in the process.

Police and paramedics arrived. Police where more interested in breathalising me and checking all my details while the paramedics worked on the women, as she was having a panic flap due to forgetting her inhaler! I heard her saying loudly over to the fuzz ' I never saw him, honestly!!' 'cos you never looked! you fat mess' I muttered under my breath.

I wasn't laughing. Was 100% threaders.

After the recovery bloke had dragged my bike onto his trailer like a dead whale goes up the back of one of them japanese whaling boats, I walked to my mates flat.

He laughed profusedly when I showed him the snapped off mirror which is all I had left of my pride and joy. He was also tickled by the fact I was walking round his estate like a power ranger in my bike gear. Made me laugh aswell, think I must of been bottling it up till then.

Still gets brought up now, When talking about the crappest ways to write off your machine.

Funniest bit though, was the 8 month battle to get the insurance leaches to pay out. What a bunch of cnuts they are!

Its a reaction to the adrenaline as some one has said, bumbling along in a scout out of verden one nice morning, at about 1500 ft, i had flipped a coin with another a/crewman on who got the hours upfront,i ended up in the back on the outward leg to detmold, almighty bang bits of blood and guts in the cab, the bootie pilot puts us on the deck so fast left my goolies at flight level.
My mucker "up front " had half a goose imbedded in his helmet, and 3 others splattered, all three of us in absolute hysterics laughing even when another cab landed down the field from us. Apart from a broken nose and two cracking blackeyes he got away with it.Always called tails ever since....

April 1990, flew back into Brize, wagon back to Brecon, pick up my car, drive to Southampton, pick up girlfriend, turn round start long drive to Scotland. By Knutsford services I admit to being knackered and ask the girlfriend if she could take over. She does, and as I'm happily dozing south of Carlisle I hear the words "Hmmm, we're going to hit that". I woke up in time to agree as we pile into the side of a spinning Carlton estate with a blow out. Then a car with a caravan and a lorry hit us. It felt like it was in very slow motion. When we got out of the car, sitting on the verge, we giggled and didn't stop for ages. Combination of exhaustion and adrenaline.

Traveling via Snatch from Camp Souter to ISAF HQ in 2008, a local pulled out infront of the vehicle I was in forcing the driver to slow down rapidly. The vehicle behind us (Toyota Landcruiser very heavily laden) swerved to the left of our Snatch but to avoid it going out of control the driver swerved to the right, clipping the back of my vehicle in a PIT like manouvre. Ive never been in a vehicle that fishtailed before, but being in a Snatch as it uncontrolably veered left and right, then toppling over the 3ft central reservation, narrowly missing the oncoming traffic, and performing a 180 degree spin before stopping was immense. Especially when the only injuries sustained were a numb arrse (myself) and some minor bruising to the arm and ribs of the other passenger in the back of the Snatch with me. How we laughed when the QRF rolled up asking where the IED exploded so they could set up a cordon but instead just got told to push the broken Snatch onto the right side of the road!!

I've had loads of close shaves as travel across Europe alot and do long drives...I came off a French motorway onto a remote road (motorway ended) in some area like Le Mans or Tours I think it was. In Winter, very foggy very dark, freezing cold night night, no road lights - thru remote farmland. Out of deep fog came car speeding on my side ....decided to carry on - flashed and used horn... to side of narrow road were several metre deep ditches, no real option. Luckily he swerved back onto his side just as he flashed past. A while further on I saw utter carnage where he had forced a Volvo into the ditch head first. Not nice. I think it was fatal according to police already at scene.
A while later, all alone in the freezing dark, I braked hard and found an articulated flat bed type agri truck again on my side of road 5 metres from me. The cab was pointing up in the air, the axle resting on a concrete wall, cab about 6 metres off ground, 'smoke' seen thru the light from headlights - from what I could see in the dark the trailer had tipped over, sheared its couplings and rolled - and shed its load. I put hazards on etc jumped out of my car and called out expecting driver to be dead, the cab door opened - driver was ok - on phone getting help. We laughed for some reason. I then got a torch and looked around see see source of 'smoke' ...both parts of the artic had been carrying tons of fresh dung!! It was steaming away furiously in the cold air! What with the two incidents I thougt I wasn't going to stop laughing. I was saying out loud to myself 'biggest load of bullsh1t the world's ever seen' etc like a nutter. Tried to take photos but was too dark to capture it properly. About half an hour later some nasty miserable shock set in, hard to control - but had to carry on driving til wee hours! Weird night.

Another incident I was driving in wee hours with my dad on a tiny rural lane and suddenly pulled over only and stopped only for a fire-engine with very few lights on to flash by in middle of lane. My dad turned to me and said 'I don't know how you knew but bl00dy well done!" (we were both a bit pssed to be fair, could have been nasty. Only time I've driven drunk. It was a VERY remote place tho. Lesson learned.)

Originally Posted by futurebootie

Mate, you should see traffic here.

Taxis, nuff said.

Ask another Saffa, Im too lazy to explain.

(Except to recount the one time a minibus from hell, the driver annoyed that his traffic wasn't moving, decide to go against oncoming traffic. The trouble is these okes have been known to shoot people for pissing them off, most of them carry weapons, so noone can do anything.)

I know exactly what you mean

The classic I remember was driving back from the Vaal to Jo'burg and having to do a tripple check in my mirror. The taxi behind me was only half there with the passenger side of the chassis hanging on by a thread, had obviously been in a wipe out. Wouldn't you know, the driver had a full complement of passengers on board, getting very good air con by the looks of things! And here was me thinking I had over done it on the cape velvet lol. I have never laughed so much in my life.

I think the worst that I had was tootling along a little lane in rural Sussex one Sunday morning when an eejit in a chavmobile came overtaking me on a blind bend: he wiped out into a wall, taking the nose-first approach into the wall and I saw bricks flying through his car and onto mine.

Tempted to get out and remonstrate with the wee bugger, it was a tad difficult when I saw the state of said chav...

Passenger in a wagon
Driver hit the kerb of the roundabout putting Bedford onto two wheels and then it's side what the police called a "slow roll" (witness said we were doing about 15 mph - apparently thats quite common)
Somehow I flew (not wearing a seatbelt chargable offence) through the windscreen (taking it with me) and landed on the road with the Bedford sliding towards me at about 2 Mph ( so my mate said it seemed much faster to me)
I scrambled out of the way and almost got my head took off by an Astra who managed to swerve round me
I ended up in hospital with just cuts and bruises and bit of gravel and galss were falling out of my nicely grazed back for weeks