Closer than a close call and not exactly a "near-death" experience.
Many years ago i was working at a lighting warehouse nr. Redhill. One day whilst on our fag break we watched a large Fosters lorry reversing up to the door of the opposite warehouse. Unbeknown to the driver there was a chap sitting in his fork lift behind the lorry. Instead of trying to drive his forklift out of the way, the forklifter pretty much sat and watched as the lorry slowly bore down on him. It caught the forklift and started to tip it. I still dream about what happened next. The forklift driver tried to get out of the cab as it was tipping over and instead of escaping by the skin of his teeth, ended up with his head crushed between the ground and the edge of his cab roof. Dead. So i suppose i was near death, which sort of validates my story. We all couldn't believe that the poor chap had pretty much sat and watched it happen to himself. Weird. But not as weird as what happened three years later. I was working for Surrey County Council and part of my job involved scanning in road accident images. Lovely. Just when i thought i could put the incident behind me. There it appeared on my desk one day, in full glossy 10" by 5" technicolour. I puked.
(inactionman, Thu 2 Dec 2004, 10:42, Reply)