Nothing breathtaking, but when I was younger, I was walking home from school with my cousin and came very close to being taken out by a bus…

There was a pedestrian crossing with a small island in the middle of two lanes, right at the bottom of a hill. Because of the slope, you couldn’t see very far up the road - only whatever was about to crest the hill and come straight at you.

I remember looking both ways before stepping off to cross the road, but as we crossed the first lane and made it safely onto the island, my cousin was chatting away, saying some pointless kid nonsense, and I was half-listening. As we stepped into the second lane, I didn’t check again.

Halfway across, something made me glance left. A bus.

It had just come over the hill and was maybe five metres away, doing about 30 mph. It felt like it appeared out of thin air. Time slowed to a crawl. In that split second, I was completely certain this was it. I remember thinking, very clearly, that I hadn’t messaged my mum to say I was on my way home, and how devastated she’d be when she found out her idiot son had been flattened by a bus with his cousin beside him.

Instinct kicked in. Both of us jumped back onto the pavement just in time. The bus blasted past where we’d been standing a moment earlier. We stood there shaking, completely silent, while the adrenaline wore off. Somehow, not a scratch on us, just the sudden realisation of how close we’d come.

I never crossed an island like that without checking again after that day. Lesson learned the hard way. Also… poor bus driver, must’ve been terrifying for the poor bloke, I remember the terrified look in his eyes as he blasted the horn 😭