Had a near miss accident at work today. I work in a joinery company and we use a chainsaw to dock over sized packs of timber. While a mate was using the chainsaw it started making a weird bell-like sound. So he kept it running (chain not spinning) and listened to the motor. He laid it on it's side to listen from another angle. I was leaning on the pack of timber across from the chainsaw trying to listen also. My hands were propping me up. All of a sudden he gave the bloody thing some herbs and the chain spun. I s*** myself and pulled my hands away as the teeth gripped into the timber. The chainsaw semi-circled on the spot and left a saw mark where my hands had been. I've been reflecting on this all arvo.
Anyone else have any moments of sheer terror?

haha f*** that s***

Sounds like one of your mates is a real f***ing idiot.

haha dude you definitely need your hands, don't lose those!

Closest I've come was swinging between some big rocks on a hillside by some form of plastic cord stuff from a tree above. mid swing it snapped, I shut my eyes and landed on my feet on a jut bit like 1m below me. Only wouldve stacked a few meters otherwise but I still shat the bed. Prolly would've just broken some stuff I guess but that's the only time I've ever had the "o f*** I'm dead" thought in my head.

That'll teach you for putting herbs on a chainsaw.

haha i know a retard i used to work with at a hardware store.. he used a circular saw to cut wood into lengths for customers.. anyway the retard is talking away and saws off 3 of his fingers at the 1/2 way point between the first and second knuckle.. anyway the d******* gets compo..

few years later he did the exact same thing and sawed off another 2 cm from his mangled hand

it will be ok.. he will run out of fingers soon and it wont happen anymore

i was grinding the inside of a 30 inch steel bus rim(cracked) when the grinder bit into a lump of slag and jumped in my hands and smashed into my glasses leaving a perfect grind mark through the entire lens i nearly shat myself .... We were welding up cracked rims for coaches to use in the paint shed

last edited by Reverend at 21:06:41 20/Apr/09

Yeah, i don't have any yet, but my brother has about three, because he is a tradesman and tradesman have inherently high risk jobs for mediocre pay.

One was a waste oil tank (i'm talking 10000L or so) was being cut up for scrap. Turns out that there was some petrol in this waste oil tank and it exploded, luckily in the opposite direction to where my brother and his workmates were and so they just got soaked in waste oil.

Another one was he was operating a scissor lift, went down a 70m ramp, was wet and slippery and lost control (4-wheel uncontrollable drift) of this scissor lift. Arrived at the bottom shaken and stirred but OK.

Worst thing i've had happen (a few times) was a taxi knocked me over. Big deal.

he will run out of fingers soon and it wont happen anymore

lol

You need one of these, but for a chain saw: http://www.sawstop.com/

superform you've been speaking dutch for too long or something because your english is becoming stunted :)

I have seen heaps of close calls working on heavy vehicles , when you go to start a coach that has been or is being worked on you just flick the ignition wait 3 to 5 seconds then start it up if you dont see or hear anything, well an apprentice gets in and starts the f***en thing straight away as the mechanice has his arm through the fan blades checking the core he starts screaming straight away but the tuff Kiwi motherf***er is holding the fan with his spare hand and the rest of the blades are wedged against his shoulder and smoke is pissing off the belts. the apprentice kills the coach and just sits white faced in the cab thinking hes killed the poor f***, dude had the worst bruising i have ever seen on his entire shoulder for months after. the apprentice is now head mechanic for Detroit Diesel LOLOL .

guy at work slipped and put his cordless drill across 2 phases in a massive board

he woke up 3m back from the board, it completely melted his entire drill chuck and took out the street fuse.

if he had been zapped he would have been 100% dead

iv had a hypothetical close call

remember when that lady got eaten by a shark at amity pt at stradie over christmas hols a few years back?

well the very day before, me and all my friends were wakeboarding at the identical spot where she got attacked. we'd do up the bindings on the beach and because it gets deep real fast and theres a big current that rips u out and then our boat would come past with the ski rope and off you'd go.

so yea we were floating there waiting to be eaten! however we werent doing it at dusk (mistake 1) and we weren't swimming with our dog (mistake 2)

my other closest call i guess is coming home from coolangatta along the m1 heading northbound obviously, in my old ute, went to change lanes and went into a complete spin @100kph. did 3 complete spins and ended up spinning from the far right lane to the far left lane, about 2-3m from the concrete barrier. managed not to hit anything / anyone which is a pretty lucky/close call. there was a new merc in the lane to the left to me which braked luckily

THEN, cause my alternator was f***ed, my car wouldnt restart. so some mad kiwi pulled over and gave me a jump start in the pissing down rain

THEN

my f***ing windscreen wiper motor blew up, so i had my head out the window with sunnies on cause it was raining that heavily doing 60kph with my hazard lights on in the left lane!!!

last edited by existence at 21:29:23 20/Apr/09

last edited by existence at 21:30:37 20/Apr/09

That SawStop is pretty sweet. The chainsaw at work has an automatic brake, but because said mate was trying to stop the thing rotating, his hand stayed on the trigger and the chain kept spinning. Apparently Stihl don't sell chainsaws with automatic brakes anymore. Something about people relying on it for safety.

mine are all car related, because i sit in front of a computer 5 days a week
one time driving back from my girlfriends place in Camden (way western sydney) I was getting an on ramp (M5 heading east) on the phone and lighting a cigarette

raining just a little bit and i wasn't driving miss dasiy but i wasnt flogging it
next thing i know the car just goes into 100% understeer and does a full 360, I came out of it facing the right way doing 80km/hr on the M5 in the far left lane

another time during a spirited run up mt nebo my brakes failed (faded+) and I spun out, 180 degrees and either side was cliff or solid rock face, then i started to roll back down the hill facing wrong way in the wrong lane and nearly hit spoon (green s14?) because i had 0 brakes still

last edited by tequila at 21:51:57 20/Apr/09

A guy walked into a door with a glass window at work and I saw it. Glass all in his face :/

I sadly have a list as long as my arm of little BS freak things that I have had happen to me. Pretty frigging ironic considering how full on I am about safety.

1) Had a mate pin my right leg to a low loader with a forklift tine
2) Had the clip from a sling get up inside my nose and rip out costing me a number of stitches.
3) Right leg was run over by a towmotor the counter weight of which was 6 ton
4) Had my left wrist sand blasted on the inside soft part

Thats just a few of the actually injuries I have gotten. The list of near misses is pretty f***ing ridiculous and people wonder why I am such a f***ing stiff when it comes to doing the right thing in the work place.

i think you mean oversteer teq
understeer is what front wheel drive pansies get

But did you leave enough gap in front of you is the important question.

Because we make doors and windows and such at work...we have a glazing section. The factory alcho (just an old dude with port breath) was grabbing a fresh sheet of glass for a job (2400x1200mm). The sheet he grabbed was leaning against a wall in front of 24 other sheets. When he pulled the top sheet, the one behind it came forward too (air displaced/suction?), then the next one followed suit, then the next, then the next...a f*** load of glass sheets ended up in his arms and he toppled under the weight. He went to the hospital, got multitudes of stitches and returned to work later for 'Friday arvo beers'...still in his hospital gown.

and returned to work later for 'Friday arvo beers'...still in his hospital gown.

Now there's dedication for you

understeer is what front wheel drive pansies get

was driving an '04 2door barina with coilovers & swaybars at the time, it was dumped on its nuts too which was lucky for me otherwise it most likely would have rolled

superform you've been speaking dutch for too long or something because your english is becoming stunted :)

haha na.. ur just a nub

but i did catch myself saying 'have a good day further' the other day

Haha speaking of crazy bastards coming back from the hospital. I heard this story from my supervisor. Theres this fat guy whos a lab head, crazy eccentric type but a complete genius at what he does. They were at a party celebrating something or another and a few hours into the night he's already groped most of the females. Anyway, its good to reiterate that he was fat, really fat. So there he was dancing like a crazy dirty old bastard when he trips over himself and falls. He tries to cushion his fall with his hands but because of his immense weight he breaks both his hands at the wrists. The ambulance takes about an hour to get there because the place is fairly far away.

A few hours go by and everyone forgets the incident. Until he shows up, both his hands casted up and proped up. He promptly starts dancing.

After he told the story my supervisor looked at me and said: That's your future. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing.

last edited by greazy at 22:23:24 20/Apr/09

had this one guy at work, panelbeater, was welding some new racks onto one of the building walls. d******* was standing on top
of a 20L thinners drum, all you hear in the workshop is f***en BoOOooooOOOM look over hes about a foot or two in the air, faint cloud of
smoke coming outta the crumpled drum, fk was the funniest thing i seen happen at work

Today at work, somebody nearly left their computer unlocked. That would have been a tragedy.

wow...

Soo many stories
Where do I start...
Most memorable I guess

Was about 4 or 5, bedlamp wasn't turning on so I traced lead down to power point to see if switch was on and discovered a frayed cable which then zapped me, burnt my hand and blacked out whole house. Only reason I'm still alive is cause Ol man had installed a circuit breaker a few weeks before hand...

Went through the windscreen of a car as a passenger when we hit a power pole. Seat belt kicked in and saved my life otherwise I would have been decapitated.

Was using a Spida Saw at a roof truss place when cutting 2x 50mm thick pieces of hardwood when 2nd (hidden) piece of hardwood had a knot, blade spat, kicked up an basically came at my chest. Thankfully (tho I don't know how) I had presence of mind to lock my elbow an use the inertia to push me back and away from danger

When I was much younger, had a power drill rip out of my hands when it caught an it wrapped the chord around my hand and leg.

Pushed back away from despatch desk to hand the driver his paperwork about .5 of a second before the forklift tymes came through the wall and would have speared me where I sat (manager was test driving a new electric forklift that didn't actually have a break which he was used to) just the fwd/rev thing.

Was using a tiny compressor (with a ball pump kinda fitting) to dust out a PSU which (stupidly) I didn't realise was still receiving power when I got distracted and moved into a hot point, blacked out the whole service room and created a small spot weld on the pump while feeling a slight tingle on my finger which was in contact. Very lucky circuit breaker kicked in.

Foreman turned on a gang nail flatbed press first thing in the morning only to have hydrolic house burst and fortunately, cover him in cold hydrolic fluid...

Have witnessed a couple of other horrible not so near misses as well.

Oh oh
Just remembered..
Was burning off at our houses tip (most farms used to have them way back when) when an something exploded and made a hole about 15cm wide in the shed between my Dad and myself. We were a good 100m away from tip.

Cane Fire:

Wind changed mid burn, my Uncle had to go warn one team and I had to run through an warn my Dad who was pushing a firebreak in the middle of teh paddock on a tractor and had no idea he was about to get fried..
I got to him with about 30seconds to spare, shouted the warning when he hosed us both down with the water tank (which was filled with Aratan or something - we were in the middle of planting cane when we got the call to assist) before we were practically toasted (hair was singed), made a mad break ACROSS the cane drills at full speed.

Around 300 acres of property got burnt out that day including a few vehicles and implements.

last edited by HERMITech at 22:51:11 20/Apr/09

Weights session @ school. Guy doing squats on his max, he falls and the weight gets stuck behind his neck & shoulders. His ass hits the ground, and the weights nearly break his damn back, only thing stopping his vertebrae from snapping is a pissweak bar to his right.

He was in such an awkward position me and my spot just swore and called out if he was ok.

Everyone stopped what they were doing n just watched the trainer yell at him for about 5 mins.

hermi ur a bullet dodger...

numnuts

'Friday arvo beers'...still in his hospital gown.

Ayeeaassa wayta do it!
http://tmcgee.customer.netspace.net.au/demoman.png

Today at work, somebody nearly left their computer unlocked. That would have been a tragedy.

This polices itself at my work - a few of the more security conscious IT guys have some embarrassing copypastas ready to go on a network file share so that if they're walking past and find an unlocked terminal, it's a matter of *clickclick* email to whole department *paste*..Send.

The act of standing up has me unvoluntarily reaching for Win-L these days.

On the way home from school once in the bus there was a big freaky storm, and I saw a huge billboard flapping around like it was going to come loose, and I pointed out the window and yelled 'hey look at the billboard' or something, and just then the billboard comes loose, and comes straight at our bus. The guy behind me quickly shut the window - right on my arm, I managed to slip it in right before the billboard hit the side of the bus.

Oh and the billboard wasn't just on the left of the road, it was on the other side of the road, across like 4-6 lanes of traffic (between the ekka showgrounds and the hospital). So it was very wierd that the billboard flew right at me, just after I spotted it.

last edited by thermite at 23:12:06 20/Apr/09

One time I tried to get near Miss Accidents but she didn't like it so punched me in the face :(

hermi ur a bullet dodger...

whoa
umm, you just reminded me....
When I was 15 an at Army Cadets at shoalwater bay I had a ricochet from a .22 lodge in the heel of my boot

this one time i went as a passenger in pave's skyline around qr.

need i say more.

Hadn't really had any on my bike until today. Had two people try to merge on top of me :( HONK HONK

I just remembered a few of way too many.

I was trying to light a bbq using an old brake fluid container full of turps or metho or something. I squirted it into the bbq to make the fire bigger and the flame went up the stream and blew the ass off the bottle while I was still holding it.

Also I've been hit by 240v more times than I'd care to count, none of the times has a circuit breaker ever tripped so only god knows how I'm still alive.

While being "MacGyver" as a kid I was up a tree with a backpack full of stuff mac would have. Trusty duct tape, rope and a knife. Yes that's right a KNIFE! with a 2" blade, well I fell out of that tree and landed square on that back pack, luckily the knife was laying down because I didn't get stabbed.

When I was a baby I knocked a heavy metal gate over almost killing me, my mum caught it just in time.

Lost control of my car, hit a gutter & launched across an entire lane of road & straight through a fence. Not a scratch or bruise on me.

Drill with a 2" wire brush attached decided not to turn off and that it wanted a piece of my shirt & got all tangled up in my shirt.

Put too much air into something I was blowing dents out of, a seam split and chunks of hot carbon landed millimetres from my eyes and I couldn't hear anything for a few minutes afterwards.

First day at work I cut my finger with an angle grinder.

edit: Oh yeah, first time ever on a motorbike decided to go too fast, couldn't stop, hit the kerb & flew over the hangers through the air & slid across some nice soft grass on my back/head. No injuries from that one either except where the grass wipped me.

I'm sure I'll think of more later.

last edited by whoop at 00:09:21 21/Apr/09

heh, you just reminded me of some others

Fell out of a Mango Tree an barely missed an old rusty staff picket stake which ripped a big chunk outta my leg/thigh

From when I was about 12 or 13 I think:
Was out shooting down the creek with my (WW2) slouch hat from one of my Uncles who spun me a yarn about how the slouch hat was why aussie soldiers were so tuff cause it was bullet proof. Mates were "can I wear your hat an you can use my rifle?" I was keen

Eventually, the invunerable story came up
One of my next door neighbours wanted to test the theory on his brother who was wearing it at the time.........
I stopped em saying, I don't think a felt hat was up to the task an so he put the hat on the ground an shot it

Mate was "good thing we did that first yeah?"

I'm remembering more an wondering how the f*** I'm still alive!

clipped a rocky cliff/wall early one morning driving to work which flipped my car and my arm was thrown out the open window and landed under the upper door frame then was dragged along the road til the car fell back on its wheels - snapped/crushed my bone + tendons but missed the artery and got a nasty gravel burn (had to be skin grafted) but somehow left my arm repairable and more importantly still attached, doctors were astounded when they got it into surgery (ambos had put some slab thing on top of it to keep it still, and docs couldnt remove it without me being asleep)

ended up 5 months later and ive got full movement, consider myself pretty lucky, and ill have the scar to remind myself of that

haha awesome stories hermi and whoop, i have a few but cantremember them now, last night while coming from the pub i decided to cycle back home, well wasnt the best idea since i could barely stand let arone cycle. Ended up falling flat on my face and messed up left leg, while lieing on the ground a black guy grabbed my bicycle and rode off with it .... chased him for a short bit but then started laughing hysterically cause that gif nigga stole my bike played in my head

I hope some of you guys report this s*** to your health and safety managers at work. Sounds like there is the potential for serious amounts of compo!

Fell out of a Mango Tree an barely missed an old rusty staff picket stake which ripped a big chunk outta my leg/thigh

barely missed? Your tolerance levels are all whacked from all those accidents you've had. Pro tip: If something rips a chuck out of any part of your anatomy, IT'S NOT A MISS!

2) Had the clip from a sling get up inside my nose and rip out costing me a number of stitches.

jesus f***

Yeah, i don't have any yet, but my brother has about three, because he is a tradesman and tradesman have inherently high risk jobs for mediocre pay.

alot of the danger seem to come from not checking or just being stupid, ie, your stories.

nah
i probably didn't tell them right. fwiw, you can't really see or check what's in a waste oil container, not in a 10,000L one anyway.

I don't know if you've ever driven a scissor lift, but it's not like driving a corolla.

How many of you boys have had this happen: http://www.break.com/usercontent/2009/4/My-Last-day-at-Home-Depot-705060.html

well I fell out of that tree and landed square on that back pack, luckily the knife was laying down because I didn't get stabbed.

I once fell out of a tree. There was a knife at the hardware store 15 mins away, I am lucky that the knife didnt somehow teleport to where I fell because I didn't get stabbed.

Haha crusher

Yeah nothing as scary as you guys but when I started out working with PC, I had the case open, back then the power switch wires etc on the PC weren't very well put together (dodgy yumcha 486 chase). So I was working on it and switched it on, case still open, then I lean over the case for some dumb reason, and zapped, the light went out in the house. Luckily the boss put in the power safe trip thingy.

Last time I ever did that sort of things

Hose fitting came off a compressed air line at work we use to blast dust out of PC's just the other day and almost took my head off. Couple of hot days an hose was in sun = rubber had loosened around connection

Anytime I've ever had to cut/weld a container that had once held flammable material, ALWAYS filled it up with water first. I know someone who didn't (met them when I was very young) once who had the most shocking burns to his body that I've seen to this day.

Fire and Compressed Air are up there with some of the scariest things imaginable to me.

Oh, and angry male cattle who have just had their nuts cut off.. I highjumped a 6' fence running away from a very unhappy Brahman when I was bout 14 cause someone didn't close the crush properly...

i once chewed my fingernail off to teh quick and then had to type with that finger all that day

that was pretty uncomfortable

^ that's a bitch
And paper cuts owie

Hrmm, paper cuts...
Smorgans paper factory at West End
You think paper is sharp? Try cardboard straight after it is cut/printed. I've seen some f***ing deep cuts from that s*** that required stitches...

coming home after work from the paddo prob 200m past the governors house through that 2nd rectangular round about @ speed limit.. i hit some gravel / oil on the road, lost complete control did a nice few spins and ended up about 50cm on my door away from a poll.. i sat there for a min going ok holy s*** and drove home at about 20km/hr

also.. was probably 7.. had a mad little nerf gun... was firing at a hole in the wall... ended up hitting the hole so i went over to get the nerf bullet out.. and i kept pushing it down... eventually i had half my arm down in the wall and got shocked

last edited by Raider at 11:26:34 21/Apr/09

Was out bush and my boots got clay mud s*** stuck to the bottom of them, so i cleaned them out with a sharp ass knife. Went to get back into the truck and slipped on my way in with the knife still in my right hand. Managed to get a grip on something when the blade was about half an inch from my neck.

Plenty of other s*** but cbf typing it out

Was 'swing monitor' in Grade 6, had to put up the swings on the playground every morning and pull them back down again every afternoon.

I was supposed to take a chair out to do it, but I was tall enough to be able to jump and hook the swing into the loops. While doing this I had to hold the swing seat and the other rope (that wasn't clipped in already) so that the chair wasn't dangling in the way of where I needed to jump.

Anyway, holding the swing and excess rope was somewhat cumbersome for a 12yo. In order to hold the excess rope I had to sort of wind it around my body and throw it over my shoulder, around my neck - see where this is going?

Jumped, clipped in the hook, rope caught around neck. Whoops.

Luckily it unraveled. Still, grade 6 teacher, Mrs Davidson, and parents not too impressed by the rope-burn.

Also, on Crusher's sarcasm, guy in our area was climbing a tree, slipped and was skewered in his stomach by a branch that ripped upward and became caught under his sternum. He had to lift himself off the branch. Luckily it was a fairly shallow penetration in the scheme of things, could have easily killed him from internal trauma, but holy f***, right?

fwiw, you can't really see or check what's in a waste oil container, not in a 10,000L one anyway.

That's why you fill it with water before cutting.

Paveway just for a little more detail.

The clip that got up my nose was pretty much identical to a key ring. Problem was it had been squashed a little making the pointy bits stick out like a pair of fish hooks. Now I was working on a job and when I lifted my head up the guy driving the crane stopped just short of me making the chains swing into my face. Of course one of these hooks went right up into my nose and because the chain was sting swinging it tore out.

It actually happened so fast I didn't feel a thing and it wasn't till a work mate pointed at all the blood that I realized I'd been hurt. The tear actually wasn't to big but it bled like bitch. Just a good thing I don't have a huge nose it might of been worse.

That's why you fill it with water before cutting.

What are you going to do with 10,000L of water? Especially if you have been told, and have reason to believe that the only thing that's ever gone in there is waste oil, which is not really flammable by a few grinder sparks?

last edited by MrHardware at 15:32:51 21/Apr/09

That's why you fill it with water before cutting.

What are you going to do with 10,000L of water?

Prevent yourself from dying, that's what. Is that not enough?

I find it very hard to believe you would cut into a tank with 10kL of water in it. That sounds like more trouble than the oil, hahaha

yup. no-one would do that.

you could still spray the walls of the tank etc, it would greatly reduce the risk of SNAKES ON A PLANE

I commute everyday on a bike along the freeway, its pretty much a weekly occurrence :)

hehquick read of you guys reminded me of a few

took a stubbie to the face, nearly lost an eye got tha tony montana look 4 free.

nearly lost a finger hooked a ring on a tree branch in tinnie trying to pull up der

hacked piece of thumb with a stanley, watched it 'fall' onto tray of the ute

awesome burns to right hand pissed melting stuff and setting fire to peoples shoes n stuff woke up hand in bucket plus other petrol fun stuff

bonnet fly up doin 120 on the putty rd tied down with belt got to the party no sweat

came off a nag galloping down dirt road landed hard on my arse @ decent speed = sore arse for life. was launched another time missed a tree branch with a few three inch nails hangin off it. it was ok the ground broke my fall and winded me the worst ive ever had

flipped my old laser on the way home from the pub = lol havent seen some of this s*** for yrs crawl out yell at randoms

had a couple of steel gates fall on me when I was standing on the back of a semi

a couple of other high speed prangs rightoffs, fences etc plus a few pissed paddock adventures

had my XL185 lock up on the bitumen on me when I was 15 headin off to pick oranges = very sudden stop aha lucky I was only in second gear I think same bike once chasing cattle dropped the c*** slid a few metres hung on hit an old watermelon furrow inertia stood it up by accident kept ridin didnt miss a beat silly bastards @ fenceline watching thought I did it on purpose. oh also never hold a knife whilst riding and dont be a clever c*** and stick it in your mouth there are so many ways to stab yourself with just about anything you dont need to increase your chances

fell out of a big tree about 5 big branches broke my fall on the way

smacked in forehead when drill locked standing on a chair trying to drill through steel beam to hang a boxing bag, sliced over a few fingers with grinder in a millisecond blah blah electrocuted 240v knocked out nearly been squashed by a few steers trying to scramble out of yards etc getting hang time when they slam into the gate and nearly been facestabbed dehorning crouched in the chute, stepped on a red belly c*** was like a landmine lucky was just behind the head couldnt step off him nothing to take him out lucky he wasnt a big one had to keep stomping with my other foot jumped off and pissbolted love the boots snakes are bad when you got nothin handy

i have forgotten so much other awesome s***. these days I am real careful.

yes I drink heavily and sometimes limp and stuff and im half deaf huh;

also it runs in the family all the fellas in my family are awesome at smashing up and rolling cars, trucks and machinery including my dad.

ahahah scoggex!
Sound like a country lad after my own heart!

I'd forgotten all about the many many near death experiences with snakes (specifically Taipan's and King Browns).
I almost made the Darwin awards once - Thought I'd be funny and run over a big Taipan while driving the tractor at speed, wheel flicked the motherf***er up into the seat with me.
Suffice to say it wasn't happy about the situation and I discoverd teleportation and rematerialised about 5m from the moving tractor :)

People rarely die from snake bites these days.

umm, this was a time when Antivenom wasn't a well known thing. and even if you aren't going to die, no one ever wants to go through the agony associated with being bit by the worlds deadliest snake...

On a side note: I actually used to know the guy (Ram Chandra) who invented the Taipan antivenom. Had the coolest reptile collection / show ever.