People Are Sharing Gruesome Stories of the Freak Accident That Took Someone's Life

Beverage cart rolled over, the canopy hit her neck and broke it.

Factors:
Cart design: The cart was faultily designed. Cart maker designs and sells them in bare chassis configurations that secondary manufacturers complete for retail sale. No problem here. It's this secondary maker that added a bunch of beverage storage up high moving the center of gravity well above what was likely safe for a narrow wheel base vehicle.

The drinks are cooled with ice. As the ice melts it moves from a solid to a liquid. Why is that a major concern? Slosh. Even your gas tank, mounted very low in your car has baffles to mitigate the effects of liquids sloshing around in your tank.

Just 20 gallons or so and it'd make your car at least annoying to drive. This cart likely help more than 20 gallons, there was also no automatic drain, dumping water as it melted would have at least lessened somewhat the effects of sloshing.

Corporate assholery:
Ignored safety issues:
So a cart with a now higher CG, with un-baffled liquids is used on a desert course on winding and hilly tracks. It had previously tipped over 5 or 6 times.

A head of maintenance quit citing in his letter of resignation this very vehicle as the reason and he wouldn't be a party to some getting hurt/killed because corporate refused to address it.

Lack of training:
**It's cart, you drive it, you sell the beers, you flirt with the rich golfers, you make a nice chunk of cash every day. If this is you; please pay attention. In my job, in construction, we're trained first on every piece of equipment we operate.

We have the manuals there to read and we go over the issues with it. One of which is tip-over hazards. If a vehicle has a cage, a roof, a lid, a sun screen, a frame on top; we are told RIDE IT AS IT TIPS OVER. Don't try to jump. If there's a seat belt; wear it.

With the equipment we use, it'd likely crush us to death. In lighter vehicles, it could very well break you neck. Demand and read the manuals. Ask if there's any known issues with it or past problems with it.**

Conclusions:
**For anyone who's operating any equipment; get trained, read the manuals, know the hazards of using it. Even if it's something pretty routine or seemingly simple. You can google most manuals these days. Don't trust anyone with your life or health automatically.

No one or their family, hurt or killed is every made "whole" from the lawsuit on the backside. It's mostly miserable; the corporations and the lawyers have made it as cheap as they can for themselves.

They will use you up and move on to the next warm body if something happens to you.** RIP NM. CM and the kids are doing great.

Username: [deleted]

I hadn’t seen my elderly neighbor who was very close with us for two days, which was odd. We live in an apartment. I knew something was wrong immediately. Her car was here, her paper was in front of her door but she wasn’t answering the door. She had no disabilities and still drove and walked and lived alone.

My boyfriend works maintenance at our place and I told him to unlock her door and it was bolted. I told him to cut the bolt.

I found her naked, in the shower but laying down with her head on the drain, face up towards the spout with scalding hot water pouring onto her face. There was shit smeared all over the walls from her apparently trying to get up.

I jumped in the tub and tried to pull her up and noticed that her skin slipped off as I did so. I looked in the bottom of the tub and there were grey lumps of skin covering the bottom of the tub- it was her skin that had burned off. I finally got under her and propped her back against my knees until the ambulance came.

I was so afraid I was hurting her more but I was trying to save her. She came to but nothing she said made sense. She succumbed to her injuries and died a couple days later in the hospital after several attempts at skin grafting. Idk if this counts or not but I needed to get it off my chest. Thanks.

Username: Nocturnal_Charlotte

When I was in middle school, I had a friend. I'll call her Abby to keep her identity hidden. Abby and I weren't super close, but we had some really great conversations and times together. She was someone I considered a friend and someone I trusted.

She was the kind of girl who I knew would stand up for me if someone harassed me (I was the "weird" kid and was prone to getting bullied). She was funny and smart, and she was actually very beautiful for a middle schooler.

One day in 7th grade, I went to my first period class like usual. I sat down and noticed my math teacher was being extra quiet today. She had her head lowered at her desk, and everyone was starting to sense that something just wasn't right.

I began to hear whispers about another one of my friends having a complete meltdown in the middle of the hall before class. The teachers were all acting strange that morning, too. After the bell rang, my teacher finally stood up and walked to the front of the class.

When she raised her head, she tucked her hair back, and everyone went silent. She had tears in her eyes, and her face was puffy as if she'd been crying all morning. Everyone paid close attention to her.

She announced to the class that someone in our grade had passed away the night before in a freak accident. My teacher refused to tell us who it was, for reasons I still don't understand, 4 years later.

The girl who passed was Abby. I was absolutely shattered with the news. Abby and I didn't always get along, but I loved her regardless. And now she's dead? How the hell does that happen? One day, she was here at school, laughing and bouncing around and causing trouble, and the next day, she was in the morgue?

It turns out that she died playing the "Choking Game," which is pretty much a challenge where you tie something around your neck and choke yourself and release it before you pass out. It's supposed to give you a feeling like you're high. But, apparently, Abby wasn't able to release herself after tying a belt around her neck, and she choked herself to death.

A lot of people wonder if it was really the Choking Game or if it was a suicide. Abby was suicidal, so no one knew for sure. I just hope that Abby is resting easy 🙏 stay safe yall

Username: Adorable_Angle_6056

My friends were back packing in Europe. They were walking. Between two cities in Switzerland and we're hiking along a lake and kind of following a train track near by.

A small mountain ended the shore line and the only way forward was a tunnel for the train. They were forced with doubling back to go around, which woud cost them hours, or going through the tunnel.

The tunnel was long and they couldn't see the exit. They'd seen no trains in the hours they'd been following the tracks, but we're still hesitant to put themselves in the tunnel should the worst happen. They himmed and hawed for a while debating what to do before one of them said fuck it lets go and started down the tunnel. The rest followed.

They walked for 20m in near pitch darkness. They had flashlights but they only do so much in that kind of blackness. The tunnel curved and eventually they could see the tunnel exit far in the distance.

And then they heard the train whistle. The tracks started to vibrate and they immediately knew the train was coming into/down the tunnel. They all sprinted as fast as they could.

There were 4 of them, 3 guys, 1 girl. My best friend, his sister, her BF, and another friend. They could hear the train getting closer, the sound of engine roaring through the cramped tunnel. Another whistle nearly deafened them as it reverberated off the tunnel walls. They were nearing the exit but it was going to be close.

With the train close behind, my best friend made it out on the right side of the tunnel, then the boy friend right after. The sister made it out on the left side of the train. The other friend was slower.

He trailed a good distance behind. He wasn't going to make it out of the tunnel, so he pressed himself to the wall and hoped to make himself small enough that the train wouldn't smear him against the tunnel wall.

At the exit, the sister looked at the train and then at her brother and BF. And she tried to quickly jump the tracks. And she tripped. Her hands fell onto the tracks and she looked up into their eyes. And then she was gone.

The friend in the tunnel survived. Somehow managed to not be smashed by the train. She was the best person I've ever known and we miss her everyday. RIP AK

Username: Vycaus

I went to high school with this dude we’ll call Dave for privacy reasons. He transferred junior year but only attended a handful of times, and as a result he didn’t have many friends.

One day toward the end of the year I invited him to come sit with my friend group. He didn’t talk much so I just started motor mouthing, and while making small talk I asked him why he barely ever came to school.

Cue the most insane conversation I have ever had with another human being. He said it was because he was constantly in the hospital. Ah dude, that sucks, some kind of illness?

Nope, dude was drinking bleach. Oh, not because he was trying to kill himself or anything. He was trying to build up a tolerance because he truly believed that somebody was going to try to poison him with bleach one day.

Who? He didn’t know the guys name but he claimed to know his face anywhere, and he knew from the bottom of his heart it was going to happen. Why was it going to happen? Because his sister died in a boating accident, of course.

... dude *what*?!? Oh yeah man, his little sister died in a boating accident when they were kids. Gruesome manner, involving propeller blades, shouldn’t have happened. And by that I mean he truly believed it shouldn’t have happened, because he was convinced that he and his sister were targeted.

You’re probably wondering: by who? Who would go out of their way to murder a child and then hunt down the surviving child years later with the intent to poison them with bleach? A cashier, apparently.

Dave told us he made “strange intense” eye contact with a cashier on the way to the lake house this happened at, and he believed that eye contact was actually the man’s methods of marking his targets.

He said he should have died that day with his sister, and because he didn’t he was now being hunted, and would continue to be hunted for the rest of his life.

I was telling that story to someone my sophomore year of college, and when I went to look him up I found out that he got ran over by a tractor on a highway. Got caught up under the frame and died like a pretzel.

Username: FroggySpirit

I was 14 and on a bike ride with some friends. We were told to go on the quiet roads but once we had gotten to the next village along we knew the busy road was the fastest one home so decided to defy our parents and take that route.

As we were cycling along the busy road a motorcycle and a truck carrying tyres went past us. In some sort of freak Final Destination style incident, a tyre fell off on the truck and hit the motorcyclist.

We didn't see all of it was the view was obscured by a bend and a large hedge but we saw the tyre hit him and him fly off his bike with a lot of speed and force.

For some reason we decided to keep cycling that way and go past the guy. This was a mistake.

We cycle closer and see traffic stopped on both side of the road and people talking about calling emergency services and then we see the motorcyclist on the ground. His helmet was no where to be seen, his head was open at the back and the contents were spilling out along with a lot of blood.

I saw the truck parked a little further down the road but I don't remember seeing the driver. Later on it was determined he was at fault for not securing his load and was arrested and convicted for manslaughter.

We decided to not tell our parents for some stupid reason but one of us snapped and spoke about it. Parents call police etc and we find out as witnesses we may be asked to give statements, I can't remember ever giving one though other than just answering some simple questions.

Police suggested to my parents I go see a therapist type person who I saw a few times and I was diagnosed with PTSD. I had recurring nightmares of the accident for years and year until they just stopped and I haven't had one in a long time now.

Oh yes, I'm a motorcyclist now. It hasn't put me off and I'm not really sure why. I really do know how stupid and dangerous they are.

Username: roboplegicwrongcock

I know this is more common than a freak accident, but.... I knew this little boy. I remember when his mother was pregnant with him, I remember when he was born, and I remember the first four years of his life.

I sang to him as an infant, I played toys with him, I helped teach him to count.... I loved this little boy the way I love my siblings. And then one day, my parents called me and my three younger siblings outside to talk to us. I found out then that this little boy had drowned.

His family had just put in a pool, and they were filling it. He had fallen in, knocked himself out, and drowned in an inch of water. The thing is, he didn’t die immediately. He died hours later in the hospital. They decided to take him off of life support because there was no chance of recovery and he was suffering.

That is still the most devastating piece of news I’ve ever received. I was twelve at the time, and my great grandfather had just died the day before, so it was a double whammy. The worst part was the funeral.

I’d known his older brother for a while too, and when I ran into him there I don’t think I’ve ever hugged someone so hard. He had written a letter to his little brother, and reading that was the only time I’ve ever broken down in front of other people.

I still think about that little boy sometimes. It’s weird. I’d known him his whole life, and just like that, gone. It’s weird when people die. Like a chessboard with a missing piece. There’s a spot that can’t be filled by anything else, and whatever replaces it always feels wrong.

But you still manage to play the game with that standin. You just don’t ever forget the original. Yeah, that was long. I just had to he got off my chest after three years.

Username: [deleted]

My best friend's mother was killed in a freak sleighriding accident. My friend, much if his family, and I were all on board when it happened.

It was a two-horse open sleigh with runners - basically a big flat deck with hay bales on it for seating. As kids, we sat with our legs off the back and would occasionally jump off and then run to catch up if it was in a slow spot.

Suddenly it seemed to pick up speed. Facing backwards we thought it was just a fast spot but when the shouting intensified and adults started tumbling off the sides we realized something bad was happening.

The sled then hit a right turn and skidded sideways, slamming into something and catapulting the remaining people off. I think this was when my friend's mother was apparently crushed between the sled and a tree.

At the back us kids all got thrown through the air and I remember thinking a was about to be impaled on a tree branch. But my friend and I landed without a scratch. His younger sister got a branch to the orbit of her eye but didn't lose her vision.

The area around the crash was a mess. It seemed like people had been thrown all over and there were several major injuries - folks with both legs broken, etc, in addition to the fatality. Something like 6 ambulances and a helicopter arrived to assist.

His immediate family stayed at my place that night and that's when his dad broke the news that his mom had died. His sister was crying blood from her bandaged eye, adding to the surreal feeling.

The day had started as a fun Christmas outing and it changed my friend forever, that's for sure. I don't know if there are any online articles about it, it was back around 1992 in Kamloops, BC.

Username: Steamcurl

When I was in high school, a guy in my class died when his car caught fire. He was parked in a local park on a Tuesday night and they found his smoldering truck the next morning. Firefighters weren't able to determine how his car caught fire.

It wasn't an accelerant like gasoline or kerosene, it wasn't an electrical fire, and they determined it wasn't started from within by a cigarette or j or something like that.

No evidence of him being drunk and passing out, and he wasn't in an accident that would cause his engine to catch fire or anything. In fact, I believe they determined the car was *off* at the time and the key wasn't even in the ignition.

Nobody knows how or why the fire started, and nobody knows why he didn't just get out of the car. Some people suspected suicide but I knew him personally. I didn't know what his home life was like or anything, but he was my teammate and we were in the same friend group.

His best friend maybe has a bias and was maybe believing what he wanted to believe but said there was absolutely no way it was suicide. He was a happy dude. He was a star athlete, likely to play D1 football somewhere, a good student, he was a goofball, and he was one of those guys who would step in and defend kids from bullies.

He wasn't above some fun hazing but had a good sense of where the line was and was always the first to step in if it stopped being fun for everyone involved. He was well-liked by just about everyone in the school, popular with his teammates and girls loved him, and just an all around great dude. Suicide just didn't seem to fit.

They actually cancelled school that day when the news broke because so many people were so distraught and they had grief counselors on site for a week with a line going all the way down the hall.

By comparison, another student died in an ATV accident while running from the cops and the school had a moment of silence over the PA and grief counselors on site for one day.

But then again, you never know what people are going through in their personal lives. His car just caught on fire and he was dead. Crazy shit.

Username: Diiiiirty

I grew up in the midwest. A very common job for highschool aged kids would be to assist working in the corn fields doing something called detasseling.

We would meet up at the highschool parking lot and take a bus to whatever field we were working that day, then once we got there everyone would line up and then walk the length of the field one person per row at a time in order to remove the tassels (male flower of the corn plant) that the large machines missed on their initial pass.

This kind of work starts early in the morning, a little before when the sun rises, so you'd be able to get the most out of the day.

Well, one day the crew I was on had just gotten to a field for the day. It had been raining the night before so there were muddy puddles everywhere and as it was so early still nothing had evaporated or anything much yet.

We're going through the rows like normal for a little while until we get to some of the rows where one of the huge center-pivot sprinklers are parked. A girl whose row had one of the wheel wells stepped in a puddle nearby it and touched it to stabilize herself while getting around it.

Evidently there were some loose wires somewhere in the area from damage to the sprinker because once her hand touched the sprinkler she seized up and started getting electrocuted something fierce. But that's not the worst of it - her best friend was doing the row next to hers so she noticed right away what was happening, but you better believe there wasn't any hazard training at this kind of job.

So she runs over to her and tries to pull her friend off with her bare hands, accomplishing nothing but adding herself to the circuit that had just been created. In a matter of seconds two young girls just trying to make some extra summer cash were now dead facedown in a muddy field, with many classmates nearby bearing witness to the tragedy.

Username: Afresian

My dad has seen a few deaths growing up but the worst one would be his friend. His friend had just heard the news he was going to have a baby girl and so he went off to his mums on his motorbike, he was was 2 streets away and a woman pulled out without looking and swerved from him but she hit a lamp post which came down, bent at the impact and swung and took his head clean off.

My dad came out the house (he lived 6 houses down the street) and saw what happened, he rang the police and ran a couple streets over to his mates mums to tell her what happened. His mate was 22, he only just passed his motorbike license 4 months ago and the baby girl was his first child. My dad didn’t ride his motorbike for almost a year.

My dad has also seen people jump from our Four Seasons car park, a friend commit suicide on the train tracks and a whole host of crazy injuries. He grew up in the roughest part of our town and has a lot of stories.

This isn’t a freak accident but when he was 7 and playing war games with his brothers in the woods, he met a nice bloke who would talk to them and make them bow and arrows from sticks, string, etc.. anyways, they went down the woods the day after and they found him hanging on a tree, he hung himself, that was the first time my dad had witnessed something like that.

The most recent freak accident (animal related) he’s seen was when he was out riding with his friends for a whole day through the countryside, they was passing through Derbyshire and out of nowhere there’s a cloud of red mist and feathers.. a pheasant wondered on the road and got diced up in his wheel and radiator, they had to ride to the nearest petrol station to wash it down.

My dad says it stunk of cooked chicken and his mate had blood all over his mouth where it splashed up under his helmet. Pheasants are really dumb, they wonder on the roads all the time and have no sense of their surroundings.

We’ve hit some a few times, same goes for rabbits and had them in stew. (He grew up very poor so relied on hunting and scavenging)

Username: AwokenWalker

My boyfriend died on valentines day, 2019. Car accident. Didn't die instantly but he was unresponsive pretty much immediately. Blunt force trauma to the head and chest. I called him maybe an hour before it happened.

He'd just gotten fired from his job, and I was ready to fight with him about it cuz he'd gone thru like five different jobs in the span of three months. But as soon as he answered and I heard his voice, immediately I went into consolation mode. Idk what it was, but he just sounded so broken and disappointed, and I wanted nothing but to comfort him.

I told him I'll carry us financially until he gets his shit together, and lamented how fucked up it was, the reason he got fired. Before we hung up, he said to me while choking back tears, "thank you for not being mad at me". That line still haunts me. I vowed to myself to be better after that call, as we'd been on hallow ground for awhile before.

An hour later, his mom calls me saying he's been in an accident, and I'm racing to the hospital. Damn near beat the ambulance to the hospital. His parents and I weren't even there ten minutes before they told us. I held his mother in my arms as we both cried harder than we've ever cried.

I'll never forget seeing his body. Feeling his cold skin. The cold, blank stare in his glazed-over eyes. The stillness of his chest. Human beings are not supposed to be that still. We're always moving, even if it's just breathing and a beating heart.

That experience tore me apart, every piece of me, the fabric of my existence. It took me close to four years to really start moving on and getting back to being a human being. I'm currently writing, recording and producing a concept album about my experience, and it's roughly 70% of the way done.

It's shaping up to be the best thing I've ever made, my magnum opus, if you will. And I hate most of my own work so, that's saying something. But I'm glad something good came of it. I feel compelled to finish it. Because otherwise his life, death, my grief and suffering, was all for nothing.

Username: DrizzlyEarth175

In 2014 I was a young lad in the Canadian Armed Forces. (CAF). I had completed Basic Training in Quebec and was onto my Basic Infantry Course in Alberta.

This particular training week of the course we were out in the field. We were set up in a Forward Observation Base (FOB). FOBs provide some protections from enemy forces like fences, gates, security detail and lookout towers. There's always one section of the platoon on security detail 24/7.

We were only out there a few hours and preparing for the weeks training. All of a sudden there was a loud noise. Where there use to be a lookout tower in the middle of the FOB was just a pile of rubble. Two of my friends were posted to that tower.

The whole platoon rushed over to dig them out. One of the two was banged up; bruises and sctrathces, more in shock than anything. My other friend, Allen, unfortunately was Vital Signs Absent.

After receiving CPR for sometime we were able to get his heart beating again but he was never conscious. He was airlifted to a Hospital in Edmonton.

At that point the training week was cancelled and we were sent back into the Barracks. We were assured any information on Allen's health would be passed down to us by the the chain of command to us as soon as available.

Two days had passed and no information was given to us. The Six O'clock News comes on that night and the the top News... Young CAF Soldier dies in training accident. We were never told anything....

I later found out Allen's Brain Stem was crushed during the Towers collapse. He was brain dead. I heard his family made the hard decision and pulled the plug on the machine keeping him alive. I also heard many of his organs were donated to a couple recipients.

There was an investigation launched to determine what had happened. To this day there is no official reason why that Tower collapsed... Still bothers me to this day. Such a young funny man. Always smiling, always joking around.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/canada/canadian-soldier-killed-in-training-exercise-at-alberta-facility-1.2090602

Username: SJHO947

My university offered two courses that allows you to get both normal and advanced open water certifications in SCUBA. Out of like 12 people we had the first course, 3 of us went in to the advanced course the next semester.

The dive site we were at was the same for both courses, which was a quarry with stuff sunk into it for divers to explore or otherwise train. We were set to attempt 3 dives on the first of our two days. Me and my classmate in question ended up buddying up because our third guy was closer to the instructor.

Visibility was maybe 4-5 feet and I was using new gear that I wasn’t fully comfortable with yet, and I had been severely overweighted so most of the dive I was trying to just keep up with the instructor, and my partner drifted a bit above us. Eventually I lost sight of her and was barely keeping up the instructor.

I ended up losing everyone so I decided to surface and swim back to a pier to wait for everyone. Instructor and other friend surfaced, and my buddy was nowhere to be seen.

We couldn’t find any bubbles so instructor went back down to look. After about 4 minutes instructor pulled her up and the regulator wasn’t in her mouth. We ran to call 911 and we were waiting, but sadly she didn’t end up making it.

It’s a bit more of a struggle than I thought it would be, I very often wonder if I had just stuck by them that I could have prevented that from happening. It supposedly wasn’t equipment failure from what I know so maybe not, but it’s still something you can’t help but wonder about.

Username: Eddie919

Years & years ago, this happened around 50 years ago, my uncle used to car pool with a friend to work. We live in northwest Alabama, where it very rarely snows & when it does it is usually more ice then snow.

One morning on their way to work it started snowing & icing & the roads got dangerous & bad very quickly, my uncle’s car started sliding & went of in a ditch & unfortunately it was on a curve that slanted downward.

So the 2 men got out & tried to push the car out of the ditch. While they were out pushing beside the road, a midsize meat truck came by & started around the curve & did not see them until it was too late. The meat truck started sliding, it overturned.

The meat truck was filled with hundreds of pounds of sides of beef. As the meat truck was sliding on that curve that was also slanting downward, that meat tumbled out & landed on my uncle’s friend & crushed him.

I was a little girl, I don’t remember the details, but I do remember he was dead at the site. I’m It was so awful & quite unbelievable. A total freak accident.

I also remember my Mom getting the call because we lived in the town where it happened, they lived in the neighboring town, she had to go pick up my uncle at the hospital.

I heard her on the phone gasping & she just got sick when they told her they couldn’t get the man off the side of the road until they got equipment to be able to pick up all that beef off of him. My understanding was that men alone couldn’t lift it all.

Username: MSRegiB

When I was a kid, there was a teenager named Matt. Matt liked to disappear into the woods and build forts. One day, he decided to go to what we all called the devils deep. It was a cliff in the woods made of limestone and mostly dirt and, at its base, a weak and winding creek.

Matt, being the adventurous type that he was, decided it to be the best place for his most perfect fort yet. He gathered his shovel, his pick, and some snacks, and he headed out into the woods.

His parents never really knew what he was up to out there, but I can assure that they didn't know that it would be the last time that they saw their son alive.

Matt had been digging for months, and most of the neighborhood kids knew about it. Every once in a while, I would cruise out there with my buddies and check it out. I was always the nervous kid who would not trust a dangerous situation. I.e. a tunnel dug into the side of a cliff that led to a chamber. It just didn't seem safe to me.

Long story short, my fears were correct, and Matt's project became his tomb. On that day it was getting late. The street lights were on, and Matt never came home. His parents were frantic.

It was the early 90s. None of us had cell phones, so parents had to call parents to trace down their kids. Eventually, they found out that he was last seen heading into the woods to work on his fort.

That night, they found their sons project in those woods. It had collapsed. It took emergency crews hours to dig him out. It kinda became a local legend.

Username: [deleted]

This one was really horrific. A friend of mine married with two kids took an RV on a vacation. The way it happened was just a freak thing that killed them all.

The RV towing a vehicle was going up a mountain. On this road they were doing construction. Due to that on the right side of the road they had those concrete dividers set up. Trucker is coming down the road too fast and hits them.

This is the freak part. Since the truck was coming down it first hit them, the the back of the truck sort of rolled down stopping against one side of the camper blocking the exits on that side. S

o the truck bed is pinned against one side of the RV. Remember those concrete barriers? The truck also pinned the RV on the other side against those concrete barriers. Now all the exits were blocked in the RV and it catches on fire.

They survived the impact itself then were all burned alive not being able to get out of the RV. Initially the police didn't know how many people were in there, they only found their teeth in the ashes. All four of them gone.

If those concrete things were not there they could get out, if the truck did not pin the other side of RV after impact they could get out, if they were not on a mountain and this happened they could get out. P

eople stopped to try and help but the fire was too bad to help and this being in a wilderness area the emergency services were very far away, not that it would have changed it if it was closer, even a ten minute response time would have been too late.

Username: sciguy52

My time has come...There is a curse on my high school. You think I'm exaggerating, but listen to this: In 2011, two boys were struck by lightning on school grounds. They both lived.

Every single year since then, exactly two kids have died every year due to freak accidents. The first year (2012) a girl drowned in sand; another year, a boy died from a peanut allergy that he never had before that day; another year, a boy fell off his bike and died.

He was wearing a helmet and the doctors say if he had landed a millimeter to either side, it wouldn't have killed him. None of these deaths make sense. Another year, a boy was trying to commit suicide out in the middle of nowhere, and his friend went to stop him.

When he shot the gun, it killed him. His friend, in shock, stepped back and fell off a cliff and also died that day. Two kids every single year.

If that's not proof enough, in 2018, a boy went ATV-ing without a helmet and without a seatbelt. His ATV flipped and his skull was crushed between the ground and the bar. Two kids had already died that year and this kid, whose brain was smashed, lived.

This kid is permanently disabled, but he is alive. I'm glad that he's alive, God bless him and his family, but there has to be more to his survival.

Then... This school year, back in 2022, my friend's little brother died the same way the first girl died. Exactly 10 years later, he drowned in sand. The same place she died, 10 school years and 21 students later. He was the 22nd.

I'm not crazy, but nobody seems to see this pattern except me. Maybe I'm just paranoid but this is the hill I will (metaphorically) die on.

(My heart goes out to the families of these people, and I hope God continues to bless them. Rest in peace to those who have passed.

We will love and miss each and every one of you. I don't mean to slander the significance of these losses, but it needs to be talked about.)

Username: shecallsmeherangel

Damn, this question brought up a lot of screwed up memories...In high school (early 1990s), two of my friends were goofing around in the school parking lot in the evening. One was driving his junker van, and the other was "hood surfing" by standing on the front hood while the car was in motion.

The driver hit a pothole, and the surfer fell off... forward. He was struck and run over by the van. This was before anyone had cell phones, so by the time they could get help, the surfer was dead. It messed up my friend for life.

In my senior year of high school, another friend died in a freak accident. He was a sky diver (a few years older than I was) and was walking to the plane. He walked under the wing/propeller of another plane, just as the pilot turned it on. He was struck by the propeller and died.

When I was in my mid-20s, I worked at a manufacturing plant. Before the products were shipped out, they were piled onto a pallet, and then a huge shrink-wrap machine was used to wrap it.

One of the women working at that station had long hair that she'd pulled back in a ponytail. Her hair was caught in the shrink wrap, and the machine snapped her neck, killing her instantly. I'm so glad I didn't see it.

From that point forward, her death was used as part of the safety training when they wanted to stress the importance of wearing nothing that could possibly get caught in any of the machines. Well, that's enough of a trip down memory lane for one day.

Username: BiewerDiva

Two people on a suspended gondolla, like those used for window cleaning, fell to their deaths from great height. They were painting the inside of a power plant cooling tower and accumulated paint on the gondolla cables got it stuck and unable to move and they tried to manually lower it to the ground.

They didn't coordinate with each other properly in releasing the brakes and the gondolla tilted rapidly to one side, with one of them falling out of it right then and there because he wasn't wearing a harness.

The other was wearing a harness but the gondolla was not designed to be suspended entirely from one side and it eventually broke and fell, being stopped just shy of the ground from the remaining connected cables. The second guy was found dangling a foot off the ground, dead from extreme whiplash.

I work in construction and of course we all joke about OSHA violations and doing careless stuff but the sad reality is that those memes are popular because safety violations are prevalent, and while many of them are a result of employers cutting costs and pushing workers to work faster and faster, most of them are just workers over estimating their expertise and usually being very dumb and killing themselves on accident.

Those two had been briefed on what to do in such a situation and had not paid attention, seeing safety briefings as annoying and boring formalities. They died avoidable deaths and left families and kids behind.

Username: PckMan

When I was just a wee lad, one of our neighbours was a widowed woman with 3 kids, the youngest of whom was my age & became my best friend for years. His father was killed in a freak accident before he was born.

A big family man and really well-liked in the community; he loved playing darts once a week at the local pub.

One night he's in there playing as usual, when three already drunk teenagers came stumbling in and tried to order drinks - it was a fairly small town & practically everyone knew who they were and that they were underage, so the bartender told them no & tossed them out.

One of the kids apparently didn't take kindly to that, and grabbed a full beer bottle off someone's table on the way out. Once outside, he threw it as hard as he could through the pub's big main window.

Unfortunately, after breaking the window it continued flying into the pub & randomly hit my friend's dad in the back of the head as he was playing darts. Fellow patrons rushed him to the small community hospital just a few minutes away, but he lost consciousness en route & was pronounced dead within the hour.

Apparently the handful of men who were playing darts hadn't even noticed the commotion at the bar, so it was entirely out of the blue for them.

The kid that threw the bottle ended up pleading to something like involuntary manslaughter, but he only got a short custodial sentence as a juvenile.

Username: CartographerCivil989

We were at a bux party on a river. One of the fellas had a boat, so we were doing boat tubing (a rubber tube is dragged behind the speeding boat at the end of a rope)

Most people had a go, usually after some time they would get chucked out of the tube due to the speed.

The groom's best man was a reserved well-mannered fellow, and was reluctant to get on the tube, but everyone cheered him on to have a go, so he went.

We watched from the river banks, as the boat did circles it would whip the rubber tube with human in it really quickly around.

Every time a circle was made our crowd would cheer, the boat did one more circle but the tube was way too close to the bank where another parked boat was , the tube came whipping round fast with the poor best man still in the rubber tube.

He was flung at high speed right into the boat, he was killed instantly. Right infront of us. Can still picture his lifeless body floating in the water with a pool of blood near his head.

All the boys panicked, but got him out. Someone tried to do mouth to mouth resuscitation on what was a head swollen with blood. He kept vomiting whilst attempting. It was a sickening shocking scene.

The boat driver had to go to the police and face manslaughter charges and negligence. But nothing happened, it was a freak accident that the driver and all of us still can't get over.

Username: midas77

An acquaintance of mine drowned trying to swim across the river in Prague. Dare was involved. Knowing him, so was probably a whole lot of drugs.

This does not constitute an accident, but would probably fit in here. Had another acquaintance of mine that I found a public radio interview with, many years after I last saw them.

They went to discuss the right to why the right self-termination for any reason should be respected, and mention repeatedly that they will self-terminate within a year on an unconfirmed suspicion they have a terminal illness.

During the interview they mentioned this was something they considered before, so they intentionally choose not to pursue any further testing past the first and only low-confidence evaluation that seemed to indicate there was an issue. They also described the method they would use, which was rather non-standard and very gruesome.

I found of the then 1 year old interview about 6 months after their death. As far as I know, nobody did anything about it. My country does not recognize the right to self-termination and has a robust publicly funded healthcare that has extensive mental health resources available.

They can be employed upon those who threaten harm to others or themselves. I can't help but think I heard someone's last cry for help publicly broadcast to the nation, and nobody did shit.

Username: SmamelessMe

We had some family friends from Poland who were in town for a while. Mother daughter two sons I think.

One of them took a couple odd-jobs here and there and was recruited by a doctor to help build a retaining wall on his property. The doctor came with his pickup truck to drop off some bricks and the kid was telling him how far to back up. His foot slipped and he floored it backwards with the gate down, crushing the kids legs between the tailgate and the wall.

He goes into surgery to fix his legs, they worked on him for a couple hours. Surgery was a success! His legs were fixed. Unfortunately he never woke up from the anesthesia. They had apparently dosed him wrong and he ended up in a coma.

Brain swelling, had to have a surgery to remove the top of his skull to give his brain room to expand. They placed the bone in his chest cavity to keep it alive. Unfortunately after a few weeks he wasn't coming out of the coma.

I went with my parents to visit him and he was a shell of the man I remembered. Pavel. I was so upset, I'm still tearing up thinking of it now. I ended up blacking out in the hospital after seeing him and woke up to a nurse giving me some water.

Long story short the hospital fucked up. They still send the family a bill for over $3MM. They went back home to Poland without paying any of it. I don't blame them.

Username: anticommon

When my uncle was a kid he was checking the mail after getting off the bus in the afternoon. My grandfather got car catalogues in the mail and he liked to look through them.

An elderly man sped around the corner in front of his house in the left lane doing 70 in a 45 in a brand new corvette. My uncle’s legs were shattered by the impact and he glanced off the top of the roof before landing in the drainage ditch by the road.

My mom had gotten home earlier and heard the car crash. She ran outside to see what happened and walked right past my uncle because she didn’t see him in the ditch. When she saw how bad the car was she turned around and started running back to the house to call 911. That’s when she saw him. It still haunts her.

He survived and is in a wheelchair 40 years later. The driver was not wearing a seatbelt and got ejected through the windshield. He flew 20 feet into the forest and hit a tree.

The top half of his body crumpled like someone stepped on an origami swan. The coroner’s report could not determine an exact cause of death due to the severity of the deformation.

That old dude bought a new sports car and decided to irresponsibly joyride it on a rural country road. He got himself killed and permanently disabled an innocent kid in the process. If you want to drive fast then go to a track.

Username: Femboy_Annihilator

-Year 2000/2001 uncle in rural US was working in the oil fields (this is years before the big oil boom) and he was working with one other person. Needed to lift a tank into place and the only thing they had to do it was the bucket of their skid steer.

Uncle maneuvers the tank into place, with the bucket in a raised position. Uncle climbs out, like he's done hundreds of times. For some reason the bucket gives out and drops, pinning him to the ground. He wasn't crushed, he suffocated to death.

The other person had no idea how to operate the skid steer and watched my uncle die. In the ensuing investigation a faulty valve partially failed causing the hydraulic pressure to drop, thus lowering the bucket.

-2014?ish height of the oil boom in the area. Truckers are breaking laws left and right to deliver crude oil because they don't get paid for sitting around or running empty trailers. They're running heavy, speeding, blowing stop signs, etc.

My cousin had a group of friends in a large farm truck, think dodge ram 2500 HD, not a small vehicle. (my cousin wasn't with them) They were headed into town for teenager shenanigans when they tried to turn onto the highway.

For some reason, there was extra gravel than normal at the particular intersection and the trucks tires spun out, completely throwing off their timing to get onto the highway in a break in traffic. Tanker truck slams into them, all three in the farm truck died on impact.

-Winter 2002: I'm in my military tech school a couple of states away from where I went to basic. A woman from my basic training sister flight completed her tech school and was on her way to her first duty station when a vehicle going in the opposite direction lost control and crashed into her.

She lost control herself and was sent flying into the ditch where her car rolled. She died at the scene. (my details could be a little off on this one as I caught all this third hand).

-2012: my brothers friend was working on his car, doing a brake job. Took it for a test drive where the dudes gf and another mutual friend followed in another car. Dude failed to perform a critical task in the brake job (I'm not sure what) and had no brakes going down a steep hill.

Lost control, crashed (and involved s few other vehicles where those drivers and passengers were thankfully ok). Gf pulled him out of the crashed car where he died in her arms.

-2016: manager in my office had a daughter who was riding a four wheeler with her fiance. Something happened and they crashed into a wire fence that decapitated her. Manager was never the same after that.

-1960's?: my dad told me this one. Some of his cousins were out bird hunting, pheasant or duck, I'm not sure. They were using an old single barrel breech load shotgun with no safety. Cousin A was ahead a little bit, scouting out birds when cousin B stumbled.

Cousin B happened to be carrying the shotgun and in his efforts to recover, fired it into the back of cousin A, killing him. I've held said shotgun and one of my uncles still has it.

Unfortunately my family is no stranger to death. Lost lots of family and friends over the years, many mostly to disease and cancer, a couple of suicides, and these freak accidents. I'm sure I'm missing a few, but this is enough for now.

Username: TheReturned

Many years ago, a friend was working on his snowmobile in the garage. He was revving the engine up, engaging the clutch and spinning the track, really getting it spinning after rebuilding the clutches. (the back of the snowmobile was held off the floor by ropes). He had the belt guard off while doing this.

Somehow with a brand new drive belt, it disintegrated into pieces and shredded. Anyone who has snowmobiled and had a belt blow under load knows how much force there is and sounds like a little bomb going off.

His wife was upstairs and heard the engine revving and them boom! She started towards the garage and her husband opened the door holding his chest, blood pouring out of him. She called for help and the ambulance came but he passed on the way to the hospital.

The police started an investigation and right away they arrested the wife because he had a hole in his chest and they tried to get her to admit she shot him.

She refused and kept telling them the same story. It was only after the autopsy they found a piece of rubber in his heart, not a bullet.

The coroner came to the house and found what was left of the belt, took it back and they were able to match the piece in his heart to the blown belt. The belt guard is there for a reason.

Username: Sweetdaddybear66

Nearly every boy in my little Catholic school was on our basketball team, and they were actually pretty good, so they were down near the ocean at an invitational tournament.

They all got that Friday off from school, and after the tournament on Sunday, the Dads let the boys hang out at the beach while they were packing up the cars.

It happened in an instant. I think 4 boys were swept up into the wave. One of the Dad's saw it happening and sprinted down to the beach and jumped in the water, swimming out to save them. Two of the boys were able to get out of the riptide, and to the shore themselves. One of them was pulled out of the tide by the Dad who jumped in.

The Dad who went back to save the last one, the fourth boy, and the boy, both died. I don't think their bodies were ever recovered.

The Archbishop presided over their funeral. There must have been 1500 people inside and surrounding the church that day. It was packed to the rafters, and spilling out into the parking lot.

The little brother of the boy sat behind me in first grade, and goes to the same gym I do now. The spark he had in his eyes died. He was one of the other boys there, who watched it all happen. I can't even imagine.

Username: kea1981

My friend. I remember I smelled gas that day. But I went to work, my boss picked me up I was a truck unloader and off we went. I get a phone call about 2-3 hours later i forgot but it was around that time.

Another friend calls me if I'm ok. Because I helped my parents sell food on the streets for a few hours in the morning until my boss picked me up.

When I spoke to him I said yeah dude. I'm working I was already in another place, he said I thought you got hurt ,that freaked me out. He said there was a explosion in close by my building I'm talking a few blocks away like 3. But evidently every one around the area felt it.

Turns out the gas exploded and basically destroyed a building. My friend was there. I was told he was found hugging his dog. The crazy part is while they searched for the bodies or survivors which took days I remember at night time while everyone who knew him just kept asking each other any news ,?.

I went to sleep and while dreaming, we were talking , suddenly a bus pulled up. There were people inside and he said I'll see you.

I asked will you be back and he smiled went inside and closed the door. The next day I found out his body was found. I think he came back to say goodbye.

Username: Flako118st

Two labourers driving back from a work site hit a rock in the darkness and was unable to free the vehicle. It was the most unlucky series of events we had come across.

They would have been rescued if they were able to radio in. But their GSMR radios batteries had fallen flat from using it all day performing crane operations. They also did not pack the charing cable it came with, it would have had a cigarette lighter adapter on it to charge in the vehicle.

On top of all of that they were in a location with no cell phone coverage and about 100km away from anybody in the Arabian desert. The emergency alarm button located in the vehicle hadn’t been installed as it was one of the new fleet of pick ups and it was awaiting an appointment to be fitted.

This was the Thursday night which is the start of the weekend and so nobody checked on them as everybody who lived on their compounds were busy relaxing enjoying the day off.

They slept in the pickup overnight and must have spent all day Friday and Saturday attempting to free the vehicle from the rock. At one point it appeared they tried to use their shovels and the car jack for leverage.

We were never sure why they didn’t just attempt to start walking at least, but in 40degree conditions it’s easy to see how they would be less inclined to leave the safety of the truck.

On Sunday morning after several attempts to make contact with the two workers, the team leader decided to drive along the railway and through the known routes to find the team. It he was unfortunately met with the truck still stuck on the rock and the two workers died having ran out of water unable to contact anyone. One of the workers laid inside the pickup and the other took rest under the truck.

That incident changed a lot of how we managed teams going forward. It really shook everybody to the core. These two workers were from the Philippines who came to the Middle East to earn money for their families. It’s unfortunate they had to go out that way.

They were extremely unlucky with all of the worse case scenarios lining up. But someone’s that’s all it takes. Never say never.

Username: Savage-September