Not about life and death. You can skip this one.
Several years ago, I found myself waiting for the bus in my quiet little hometown. There was hardly anyone around, but I knew the kids from the nearby school would be coming soon (mostly as I was going to that school then too, but had got out early). So I secured my place exactly where the door of the arriving bus would come to be.

As the bus arrived, a considerable queue had built behind me, consisting of screaming kids carrying a lot of weight on their cloddy little torsos, and having very low barycentres. And suddenly, everybody made a push forward. Already used to this kind of shenanigans, the driver showed no sign of slowing down, to get it over with as quickly as possible.

I struggled hard to push the entire pack one step back, but wasn’t able to get my feet back up that kerb. That is, I did succeed, just a fraction of a second before that enormous wheel would have milled my foot to a slightly sticky tarmac topping.

The next day I told my friends about it, and they just thought I needed to be wearing shoes with steel caps in order to be safe…
( BringYourOwnParachute Meet me here on, Fri 20 Aug 2010, 15:17, 2 replies)

Hmmm
Steel caps would probably just slice your toes clean off if a bus went over them.
(MJPerry was crude but clickable at, Fri 20 Aug 2010, 16:50, closed)

Click for "Barycentres".
Reads better than "centres of gravity" for some reason.
(Me, I'm not... in any way intoxicated, Fri 20 Aug 2010, 18:09, closed)