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Are you that smart or just lucky?

D

da.bees

Well-known Member
Reading the comments blaming parents and poor upbringing for teen deaths and injuries on the farm make's me ask,,,,,how close have you came to messing up eventhough you had years of experience under your belt?
It's only by grace of God I'm still here,more so that I still have all my body parts. One of my narrow escapes. Started engine while standing on ground and tractor was in gear. Another,stumbled and fell on deck near spinning brush hog shaft while walking back from closeing gate.
 
I asked my wife once if I'd ever told her about the time I got run over by my own pickup.

She said, "No, and I don't want to hear about it".
 
I think posting stupid things that almost got us killed is a wake up call. By letting others know our mistakes may keep someone else's family from going to a funeral. I did the tractor starting thing my self standing by the rear tire. I had just enough time to jump back, and watch my best tractor head for sudden death over a cliff. Last year I was disking on a fairly steep hill. I ran up on a large rock on the high side. My tractor just about went over. Dad tells the story while seeding oats. He planted with his crawler. He decided to get off the tractor while it was moving and sit on the grain drill to watch things. He noticed he was heading for a cliff. By the time he jumped back on the tractor, and got it stopped, it was just about at the tipping point. That story has stayed with me all my life. Stan
 
Not smart or lucky... just someone looking out for me. July 28th, 2003, I fell off a ladder propped up against the back of a grain truck. When I fell, I should have landed in the auger below, and should be minus an arm or worse. Instead, I landed well off to the side, and landed on my elbows, breaking both. Still don't know how that happened. But I felt like someone shoved me (you know the feel, like you got hit hard playing football) in the one shoulder for 6 weeks.

I got more serious about church after that. And I learned there are 3 kinds of people when you tell somebody something like this. 1 thinks your nuts, and some kind of freak. Another would like to believe, but can't because they never had a similar experience. And then there is the 3rd... they look you in the eye with a knowing look, because they've been there , too.

What kind are you??
 
i had a case sc i too started in gear i was standing behind it and it started to back up luckly i was able to reach push bottom switch to kill it i did get a black and blue leg out of it mrs 730 was sitting on the porch and saw the whole thing.
 
I have more close calls than I care to remember or mention. The only one I will mention is the day I was running late for school during the first ice storm of the year, my first year of driving (14 yrs old). I was cruising down our country road way too fast for a foggy morning with almost zero visibility, hit the brakes the instant I saw the stop sign at the intersection for the highway, only I did not stop, not even a little, the highway was solid black ice! In a panic for fear of getting t-boned I punched it and managed to get my pickup to fishtail enough to turn left into the right lane and then skid to a stop. Once I regained my composure I looked out my right window to see my mirror kissing the light pole. I got and made sure that I did not in fact bounce off of the light pole. Thankfully no damage and off to school I went. Ever since then I have learned to take ice and snow a little more seriously and to thank God each and ever time that he spares me for another day.
 
Well I probably should have been dead many times over. When i was 15 i totaled a 1965 Chev Bel-air with a Honda 90 motorcycle because the guy driving it made a left turn right in front of me and i hit the front fender and roller down the right side of the car front to back. Also some time in the 80s i made the mistake of using a front end loader to lift a car up to work under it and the hyd bleed off and dropped it on me and i spent a few days in the hospital. Plus there are a good number of other things like those and yet i still have all my fingers and toes etc.
 
Never had an issue with farm or construction equipment.......a few close calls on them tanks though.......maybe that's what made me so careful around equipment?

Rick
 
About 8 years ago I was putting track frames on a D9G CAT. We had a big excavator acting as a crane for one of the frames because I couldn't get my service truck to that side.

The thing had bound up on the hard bar, and I ducked into the hole between the frame and the main body of the machine to give the jack holding the hard bar a few strokes up.

I got in several licks before I heard something pop. Our of instinct I threw myself back out of the hole and began backing up.

About that time the 11,000 lb frame jumped up up about three feet, slammed into the 30,000 lb main body 3 ties, right where head had been, and then dropped back down on the ground.

The whole incident, from pop to drop, took less than 5 seconds. In other words, a split second hesitation on my part when I heard that pop, and I would have been crushed......

When things like this happen to people, we usually tend to laugh about it later. While we know the seriousness of what happened, deep down, I think the laughter is much easier than having to actually to face mortality and just how close to death you may have been.

In this case, the look on the face of the guy operating the excavator was priceless......and by the time he commented about how fast 'the old man' (my Dad) moved, we were laughing to the point of tears.
 
I have been lucky if I was smart I would not have been in that situation. I have a couple I have never told anyone and will not start now. Don't even like to think about it.
 
One year in the Army. My crane team was loading radio huts on to duce and halfs.I was on top of one hut when the crane operator was. Swinging the
crane hook back over. I looked away just for a second then looked back. In time to meet the hook.Hit my helment knocked me off the hut. About 12 ft to
the ground. I still have the helment big dent and all.
 
I've got plenty of scars to prove that I'm just darned lucky to still be alive.

Why do things that happen to stupid people keep happening to me?
 
Got crushed by a heavy hay elevator about 27 years ago, lucky to have survived that one. Still can count the number of broken ribs I had. Someone was looking out for me.....Ben
 
coonie, I know exactly what you are saying!

This happened to me many years ago, driving a 3/4 ton box van, one of those days when the temperature dropped from the 80's to 20's in a couple hours...

Came around a curve, there is a car in the opposite ditch. About that time I realized why it was there. ICE!

It hadn't rained, no other evidence that there would be ice, just some strange condensation ice from the sudden temperature drop.

Well, of course I hit the same ice, began sliding side ways.

Problem is, there were about 5 or 6 people standing beside the car in the ditch, and I was sliding straight for them!!!

I was on the horn, trying to steer and wave them to run, they were oblivious to what was about to happen.

Chances are I would not have been physically injured, but I was about to cause the deaths of several people!

About that time, the truck stopped sliding...

Now, I have been in the ditch more than once, you get that feeling when you cross the tipping point, when you know you are going, and there is not a thing you can do to stop it...

Well, I was way beyond that point! There was a force that defies all laws of physics that pushed that truck back on the road!

The Bible references angels many times. There is no mention of them being dainty little flittering fairies! They are fearsome, and powerful! That day one prevented a huge tragedy for those people, and myself!
 
I think of growing up on a dairy farm. I was the youngest of 3 boys. I was the driver, older brothers did the heavy lifting. I was always stuck behind the steering wheel. I operated the bailer, drove the truck, plowed, disked, ran the combine, pulled silage wagon. It's a wonder I'm still alive all the things I did. Today child protective services would have locked my dad up for child endangerment. All of us lived, no serious injuries, all fingers and toes, only one broken bone, brother broke his arm, dad backed over him with tractor.

No way sugar coating it, farming is dangerous way of life, some farmers get killed. Uncle got wrapped around a PTO shaft, dismembered. It happened in front of my cousin when he was 5.
geo
 
LUCKY to have someone watching out for me. I would like to say I am done doing dumb stuff but no matter how hard I try it seems to find me.
 
Someday I'll have to try and count them all up. There have been a long list of close calls, but I've survived them all. Only one put me in the hospital for knee surgery about a month after I graduated from high school.
 
As my uncle often says, I'd rather be lucky than good. I'm young and I know there are quite a few times where I could be 6 feet under but by the grace of God I'm still here.
 
When I think ahead and change what I plan to do to avoid an accident, I consider myself smart. When I have an accident but don't get hurt, I consider myself very lucky.
 
About 25 years ago i was running the hay crimper over some mowed hay, I was near an orchard and a branch was going to hit me in the face, I put my foot up to block it, the next thing I know i am on the ground running between the tractor and the crimper holding on to the steering wheel and headed toward a swamp. I thank the Good Lord for saving me that time. I got religion on safety and have been safer ever since.
 
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