Topic: close call stories

[techy5025]

Several months after getting my private pilots license in the late 60's, I flew up from Florida to Tenn. While there, I took my former boss for a local fun flight which involved landing at a grass airfield near Reelfoot lake for lunch. After eating, we jumped back in the plane and took off toward the lake because that was the direction the wind was coming from. The problem was between the field and the lake was a row of really tall trees which I believe we may have cleared by a foot or so. That came close to causing a "severe" laundry problem....or much worse! I told my boss I was looking for bald eagles in the tops of the trees. 

I later learned that people always landed toward the lake and took off away from it because of the trees regardless of the wind direction.    Sometimes, rules that you are taught just don't apply.

Jim

[strynboen]

flying out over kold vater takes alså some lift..a ultralight crashes a fev years ago here on iland..korse he flov to slov aut over the vater..tvo vas killed

[Don R]

I'm not a pilot but didn't know that, I learned something.

[strynboen]

 ,,just a idea i have...only time i flov,,vas vhen a car drove in front of me and my cd-50 moped,,vhen i drove 80 kmh..
så ve have to ask aur pilots in forum

[Don R]

We were installing storm drain pipes on a bridge over a railroad switch yard, we needed to swing our lift over the tracks so the day before we went to the tower, talked to the trainmaster and yardmaster to make arrangments. The next morning we checked in and were assigned a flagman, they checked the schedules, went down the tracks both ways (we assumed to set flares or something and told us to go ahead). We were almost done but there was one pipe hanger I couldn't quite reach, I thought about having my partner hold my safety harness while I climbed on the rail of the basket so I could adjust the last hanger and we would be finished. I knew there was a safety program and it wasn't safe to do that so we went down to drive 40 minutes to a crossing to get to the other side of the tracks. As soon as we were off the tracks a freight train came from the south (we had been on the north side of the bridge) right on the rails we had been parked against. There were trees and an s curve so the engineer could not have seen us in time to stop. My partner went to pull the flagman out of his truck and beat his azz but I stopped him. We tried to report it but everyone brushed it off. I should have called OSHA but did not. There was constant train noise so we wouldn't have noticed the sound of it coming. Just lucky I guess.
 The problem was we did it right, other people who were not in harms way failed us.

[noahspop]

I had my drivers license for about a month or so, and I was driving home with my girlfriend and two of her friends. I had the cruz control set at 63 mph while driving in the right hand lane (slow lane), and came upon a bend in the road. All of a sudden the girls start screaming, because there was a lowrider Monte Carlo all primered up with no rear wheels stuck half in my land and the other half on the shoulder of the road. I couldn't get in the left lane, because of other cars were there. I couldn't go off the shoulder of the road, because of an embankment going downhill. I decided to slam on my brakes, slightly turning the wheel, and I ended up being parallel with the Monte Carlo, with five feet to spare.

Talk about being scared.

[BeSeeingYou]

I was driving on a freeway in Minneapolis in a van behind a flatbed truck that had what looked to be 2  inch diameter steel pipe six or seven feet tall sitting in sockets in the bed so you could stack stuff there I guess.  Well the truck hit a giant pothole and one of the pipes came out and tumbled end over end right for me.  With no time to look I served halfway into the other lane as the pipe tumbled by the passenger side missing by a foot.  Luckily no one was in that lane and after the pipe passed me by it stopped tumbling and fell over and no one else hit it as I watched in my mirror.  It's interesting that in certain situations you can consider options and make snap judgments.  I remember what went through my head in a split second.  If I don't do anything there is 100% chance the pipe will hit me coming through the windshield at 65mph.  On the other hand there is a 50% chance someone is in the lane next to me.  Easy choice.  

[Don R]

 I was welding in the attached garage. I went in for a whiz break and when I returned the work bench was on fire.

 I saw a guy standing under a concrete plank while a crane was setting it on a building site. On the next lift one of the straps broke. He had to come down and sit for a minute.
 
 While driving down the street I saw a guy working under a car on a bumper jack. I thought about stopping and talking to him about getting a block or stand under the car but I figured he would think I was an #$%* and should mind my own business. The next day the paper reported he died under that car.