I've been lucky

People will often look back at an unfortunate incident, an accident, or a tragedy and say "if only this hadn't happened", or "if only this or that".
The fact of the matter is that people only focus on accidents that did happen, seldom the ones that were somehow avoided, or the ones that never happened and that they were never aware of (like the guy walking 5 meters behind you being drawn into a dark alley, mugged and shot, or the drunk guy that was supposed to run you over but didn't leave the bar because his friend took his car keys)
People tend to forget fairly quickly the few times people they say "Pfew, I was lucky on that one"

This is why I've decided to keep track the times where I was lucky for one reason or another, whether it was plain dumb luck, or whether I controlled the end result but was helped with a little luck.
The idea is should I ever die or get injured because of something out of my control, I don't want to be looked at as a very unlucky man. I had my share of luck, but you don't win every time.

1997/06: I fell asleep while driving

I'm not the kind of guy to do that kind of thing, but here's what happened:
After living 1 year in LA, I had a plane for a 3 month student exchange trip to Japan, but at the same time, I was moving out as at my return from Japan I was due to move from LA to the San Francisco Bay Area.
So, I had to pack both for my trip and the rest of my stuff. All my possessions had to be boxed up for storage. To make things even simpler, I had just gotten my first laptop the previous day (long story) and I had to load it up with linux and all my stuff before getting on the plane.

I ended up packing all night while working on my laptop and barely got everything boxed up in time to move the boxes to a friend's place and go to the airport.
The catch is that I had to store the car somewhere near the airport, and my friend offered to store it at his Mom's so I followed him with my car while he was leading the way.
It's only when we had done 2/3rd of the way that I started feeling sleepy (not having slept all night and all). Back then, I decided that I could make it, after all I didn't have much of a choice because my friend would probably not have seen me stop on the side of the road, and I'd have been lost somewhere, and would have missed my plane and ruined my trip to Japan (I was to tired to realize that I could have passed my friend and made signs that I was going to stop), so I opened the window to let fresh air in, and decided that I was going to make it.
But those eyelids where getting really heavy, and I just didn't pick up the clue that it was horribly wrong for me to close my eyes even for a second.

I don't remember in details, but I probably closed my eyes 4 to 6 times for a few seconds before I realized that I was going to crash into someone if I continued, and that somehow woke me up long enough to get there.

When I think back about this, it was truly scary, I tell you. People die in cars just like this every year.
I'll probably never be in a situation like this anymore (having such pressure to continue or get lost and miss a 3 month trip), but I sure know that I'd stop if this happens again (update 13 years later: I have held true to this, I've been very careful of not driving tired anymore, and if somehow I felt too tired, I just pulled over and took a nap on the side of the road).

2000/04 & 2000/06: Near accidents

First, on 237, coming back from a ski trip at Lake Tahoe, I was in the rightmost late, close to my exit and the guy next lane merges right onto my car. I was able to accelerate and avoid him but not by much.
The guy follows me and stops at the red light right next to me. He pulls down his window and before I get the chance to ask him what's wrong with him, he apologizes for falling asleep at the wheel. Gotta love those people who don't know when they should pull over and rest a bit

Later, in the city, a convertible with four young girls apparently more busy chatting, laughing and applying makeup than watching traffic, changed lanes without signaling (not that I expect anyone to signal anymore, sigh...) and almost ran into my car too. I was able to brake just before they touched my car.

What did I learn?
Nothing that I didn't know already, some people just don't know how to drive and pay no attention whatsoever to the road.

2000/06/17: I'm lucky I walked away from that

Yeah, so this one, wish I could write more details here, but it's not advisable because of reasons. Let's just say that I am so thankful it turned out ok.

2000/08/31: My car was broken into

Not that it'd be the first time, it got broken into in San Francisco and my laptop was stolen (it was the night of the first Mozilla party), and later, someone broke into my car to steal my $50 radar detector, kinda lame...
Anyway, this time my car gets broken into in front of the Health club I go to, in broad daylight, and guess what, the loser steals $5 of coins, a $20 pair of snikers in my trunk, and (more annoying) my little bag of random toys in my jacket pocket (rechargeable NiMH batteries, phone battery, contact lenses, and random useful tools).

You're probably asking, So, where's the lucky part anyway?. Well, my $1600 5 day old Empeg car player, in plain sight was left alone, as well as my attaché case in the trunk (although the shoes where stolen from the trunk), and it contained my original passport which I needed the next day for my green card process, as well as the renewal of the passport itself. Take my word for it, losing it would have severely sucked.

2000/10: Another couple of near accidents

Well, this time it was nothing less than two consecutive days in a row. I was driving on normal streets, and people who were driving a bit slower than me changed lanes with no warning (don't want to use up those turn signal bulbs, they must be expensive). Twice, I had to slam on my breaks and didn't avoid their cars by much.
The first guy was coming slow from the right and somehow tried to speed up and change lanes at the same time. The second one had his head up his butt and had no idea where he was going and either decided to change lanes for no reason or drifted into my lane by mistake...

2000/10: Injuries

So first, my pinky burst open after being crushed by a 100lb piece of computer equipement that I was carrying when my feet got caught in some heavy plastic wrapping that was on the floor (what do you want, I'm stupid, I tried to save the equipment instead of letting it go). While the finger injury was severe and could have cut my finger, or severed the nerve, it was just ugly but it healed up after a month. In the same fall, I busted one of my knees, and while it swole up quite badly and my leg had to be restrained for a week, nothing broke or got torn up and I recovered within 6 to 8 weeks.

During that time, I also got injured at the EEBall while I was in a crowd, just millimeters below my eye. Nothing bad happened, just a scratch that healed a few days later. I shudder at the thought of this happening a few minimeters higher...

It's where the term "Dumb luck" is appropriate I believe. If one day I get some injury where I'm not so lucky, so be it...

2001/03: Drunk or very dangerous driver

Somehow, most near-misses seem to happen on the road. Figures...
This time, some completely crazy or drunk person driving south on 880 towards 237 never saw that the rightmost lane was being closed off, and that cones where merging his lane onto the right one (the one I was in). He hit with his huge SUV at least 3 cones and two went flying in front of my car. Since I knew from autocrossing that hitting a few cones isn't that bad, I tried to chose an angle that didn't look too bad and knocked them further myself.
Ideally, I should have avoided them, but I had less than 2 seconds to react and it wasn't enough to change lanes safely, so I went for the slight damage to my front bumper instead, after all cones are light and plastic, so they're not too dangerous.

The worst part is that I followed that wako as I was also merging on to 237, and he was just flying left and right changing lanes at the last second, and guess what, there was some work on 237 too, and he hit more cones there too. After I had his license plate number, I let him go, and parked next to some cops who were on the side of the road, and gave them his description.
They said, they'd radio that ahead, but it didn't look like they actually did it :-(

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2004/03: Near miss, again

Man, almost 3 years since last time I reported being really lucky. Actually, there were several occurences, like being layed off from VA Software in time to join Google when it was still a good time to join

and the number of times I could have hurt myself snowboarding, but didn't (just to name a few)

Anyway, I shouldn't stop updating this page. Today, I had a fairly scary episode (it had been a while, I guess 3 years now), where I was taking my favorite off ramp, I turned my high beams, so as to better see the curve that I was going to drive on (night time).
Well, some guy realizes at the very last second that this was his exit too, and while driving 5mph or so, almost pulls in front of me, in a way that I'm not sure I would have been able to avoid him.
Luckily, I think my (upgraded) high beams gave him a clue that he was making a big mistake, and he stopped merging, letting me pass by with little room to spare. It may be that I owe not having a wrecked car, and personal injury, to my upgraded headlights. If so, they were definitely worth every penny...

Conclusion

If I ever get run over while crossing the street, or catch some rare disease, or something else that people might consider unlucky, don't go and blame luck for it. I've already had my share of luck, so it's only fair if I get really unlucky one day.

Some say "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger", I'd say "what doesn't kill you makes you wiser" (or if it doesn't, you probably deserve to be killed next time )

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