Safe Speed Forums

Well I wasn't going to but then I thought how this could be a good thread for learning from others mistakes, so long as we don’t mind looking daft. (Something I don't have a problem with) ...



I was cleaning the chain on my motorbike one day, about three years ago, and to finish I always wipe it, (before spraying it with oil), by holding a clean rag around the chain and turning the wheel.

Now obviously, the sensible thing to do is turn it in the direction which is taking your hand away from the wheel and this is what I generally always do. But due to a weight training injury the action of pushing the wheel in the right direction was really hurting my shoulder this time so it was less hurtful to turn it in the opposite direction.

No prob, I thought, just wrap the rag around your hand and gently does it. Trouble was, an edge of the rag I was using fell down without me noticing and somehow got caught and the momentum of the wheel pulled my hand in between the sprocket and chain. Fingers don’t 'arf bleed profusely you know?

Luckily, my friend was there and witnessed it. His first remark was “I bet that hurt?” but when he saw the state of my finger and my ashen face he said “Wait there, I’ll get my car!” So once I’d finished throwing-up in the garden, off to A&E we went…

My finger was split in two and crushed at the nail through to the bone. I had to go under a general anaesthetic where beforehand, (no pun intended), I was told it may have to be terminalised! Now I’d never heard that word before but it sounded like a euphemism for amputate to me.

I wasn’t wrong, but what was worse was he told me with these sorts of ‘terminalisations’ they can’t just take the bad bit off, it has to be removed below the joint, so I was looking at losing half my finger! Ironically, I’d just started to re-learn the guitar so I was a sad man from planet unhappy at this point.

Luckily for me, a plastic surgeon specialising in hands operated on it and did a remarkable job. Talk about making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear! After doing whatever he did, all I could see was a cleverly stitched silver foil to allow my nail to grow under and some ugly bits and bruising. So I looked like bionic finger man for a few months. Wish I’d got a chance to thank him afterwards.

Today you would hardly tell it apart from my good digits except from some scarring and a slight change in the way my nail grows. It’s numb in places too, a bit like my head, but given what could have happened I’m not complaining.

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

Nowhere near as serious but probably a bit funnier,

On the way to a bike rally in the early '90s with a bunch of mates I was hit on the throat by a bee-sting 1st.I Slammed the brakes on as hard as I could without anyone rear-ending me and frantically pulled my gloves and helmet off.I Pullled the sting out and sat down on the verge for a ciggy as I was a bit stressed.

A couple of minutes later I started getting red hot pains in my bum, up my back and legs. I'd sat down on a red ant nest.

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Smokebelching,CO2 making,child murdering planet raping,granny mugging,politically incorrect globally warming (or is it climate changing now it's getting colder?)thug.
That's what the government want you to believe of me. If they get back in I'm emigrating.

Tone that's awful!!!

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

I was very lucky for sure. Imagine if I'd done it using the engine Luckily, even I'm not that stupid otherwise I would have no fingers on that hand today. Actually, I'd rather not imagine it.


It was. Am I allowed to laff? Too late

Thanks Nos4r2

BTW. I was told never to pull the sting out because you squeeze the poision in. You're meant to use a knife and tease it out. Oh 'ang on. We can't carry them anymore can we? Oh well. How times change.

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

Dumb accidents? I'm not sure the Safespeed forums server has enough gigawotsits to list all my dumb accidents

Spectaular bicycle accidents as a child;

Various pen knife accidents as an older child;

got fingers caught around the elevator chain while moving bales as an adolesent

Stabbed fork through foot while mucking out a calf pen as a slightly older adolesent;

Dropped a pallet fork off a Matbro on my foot as a YTS student;

Countless hammer/finger/punch interfaces

A couple of differences of opinions with maternal bovines;

Wrote car off as a troubled student;

House burnt to the ground while living abroad, not guilty this time, wasn't in;

While standing on the lever to strap down a combine harvester to a low loader, you've guessed, slipped, blood, pain.

Burning rubbish using a US gallon of petrol as lighter fluid, you've guessed again... BOOM, black face, 2nd degree burns etc

More differences of opinion with maternal farm animals, swine, this time and worse than bovine strops!

Had a car door opened on me while running = whip lash;

A load of round bales fell on my head crushing me against a tractor rear fender turned into 11 stitches in my head, fractured C7 vertbrae and 6 weeks off work;

Dropped brothers week old motorcycle against my car on my drive, very sore arm from trying to save it. Very sore wallet from failing to save it.

Better add to that:

heart murmour as a child;

Bells Palsy, twice;

Labirynthitis which I can't spell and turned into tinitis;

Viral menigitis as a student;

and occasionally depression

Well I've learnt not to hang out with you I think Adam Glad you're okay now

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

I recon the daftest thing I've ever done (appart from shutting my finger in a car door - I STILL have a funny lump on the bone a year later) is this:

I was trying to grind out a lap weld coz I'd got the part in the wrong place. I got most of the way through, but managed to leave a very thin sliver of material still attached. Like a muppet I decided to 'flick' it off with the end of my thumb, forgetting that the grinder tends to warm things up a bit. It melted, not cut, melted it's way into my thumb and since it'd been cautorised (sp?) it took ferkin ages to heal.

I'm no longer allowed sharp things...

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

I was riding home from school one day ( with hands in pockets as riding no hands was a mark of genius allegedly) and I noticed a girl I knew, I turned, waved and then ran right into the back of a parked car, slid along the crossbar and CRUNCH! went my instrument of creation followed by its luggage. It wasnt till I got home to examine my pain that I noticed I had a gash in my sac ......the worst bit was telling mum followed by dropping my pants to a tittering female Doctor.

A friend of mine managed to do almost exactly the same thing as you Tone, only he had the bike on the centre stand, in first, with the engine running, he was not quite so lucky and his right index finger is now somewhat shorter. He was a good guitarist and somehow, despite the loss, still is!

As for me, well - http://www.scoobynet.com/archive/index. ... 76171.html

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

Well it didn't hinder Tony Iommi's career

"In an industrial accident at the age of 17 on his last day of work in a sheet metal factory, he lost the tips of the middle and ring finger of his right hand"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Iommi

Hope you got some good boots now toltec

BTW Herbie, you missed out the bit we all wanted to know. How did it go with her?

Oh, you remind me of a similar accident I had to 'that' area when I got stuck up a tree. I didn't know how to get down and ended up sliding down a foot or two in a panic and a branch nearly tugged them off! What is it with trees that makes going up far easier than coming down? One of life's imponderable's I guess, like toast always falling butter side down..

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

I stuck a garden fork right through my big toe once.

Healed up a treat, but I had a round hole through the nail for about ayear until it grew out....

I managed to trap my thumb in a brake caliper when using compressed air to ease out a siezed piston!

The irony was I had been extreamly careful to keep my fingers out of the way but somehow the tip of my thumb managed to work its way into the "Danger Zone"

I can assure you that it hurt! (Think steam hammer!)

It was well beyond shouting and swearing. It seemed like several minuits before I could resume breathing

The only way I could relieve the pain was by (Carefully) drilling a hole through my thubmnail! (When I was through the blood shot over my shoulder and the pain relief was instant )

I'll not do that again!

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

I shouldn't have read this thread whilst eating my lunch...

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

Oh I had the boots but just wasn't wearing them, which is what made the whole thing particularly dumb.

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

Almost an accident -opened side door of van to get safety boots out to find toolbox had slid accross floor and wanted out -only nifty footwork stopped toolbox landing on top of foot -How would you explain that one - now boots ride up front .

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

Messing around in the skool playground, a mate picked me up from behind and swung me round at the same time as another lad decided to sling a tennis ball at us as hard as he could.
The world suddenly went into slow motion as my mind mapped the trajectory of the tennis ball and the path of my own motion. I knew exactly[i][/i]what was going to happen and could do nothing about it.
After contact was made, my mate dropped me in shock and I hit the deck like the proverbial sack of spuds. It was a good 5 minutes before I could even think of moving.

BTW Herbie, you missed out the bit we all wanted to know. How did it go with her?

Oh, you remind me of a similar accident I had to 'that' area when I got stuck up a tree. I didn't know how to get down and ended up sliding down a foot or two in a panic and a branch nearly tugged them off! What is it with trees that makes going up far easier than coming down? One of life's imponderable's I guess, like toast always falling butter side down..[/quote]

You could say she gave me the sac.

Your tree incident sound painful, mine was lucky as very little pain involved more red faced than red raw.

Just to add to list - happened to mate of mine - who works with a railway construction company .

One night ,lets skip the technical details , a 2lb (thats a 1kg ) hammer flew through the air and struck my mate(standing about 5ft away-that's about 15 m for the modern brigade )on the temple -bang -he fell poleaxed Panic ensued - mate gets taken to hospital ,arives back at work days later with sicknote (and large bruise on head ,with faulty vision) and thought that an inch either way and it would have been a visit to the mortuary.
All the enquiries over -or so they thought -week later ,bloke in charge of safety arrangements gets a letter "why did bloke with hammer let go " ) - reply "because it slipped out of his hand "

The comical bit happened a few days later - his boss appeared with some paperwork to be delivered to a sub contractor - boss was wearing motorbike helmet ("told it's not safe to be around you " he says ) ----aparently whole room exploded in laughter .

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

Not dumb so much but an accident nevertheless. 'twas 1973ish...

I was not treated very well at school, so at age ~13 I took up weight lifting. My idol at the time was man whom to this day I still admire and respect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Alexeev

I even cut the front page of the Radio Times out with his picture on the front page at the time of the 1972 Olympics showing this magnificent, incredible, man What looked like a big fat lazy guy was - ‘The Strongest Man on Earth!’

I trained like a man possessed and on bugger-all nutrition! The biggest guy in my class, (and year actually), was Gary Valentie. At almost twice my weight, he was the only one who could match me!

At 16 years old and weighing in at just 11 stone, ringing wet, I could clean and jerk 200lbs above my head. (That’s quite a few pounds over bodyweight). I carry it on my belly these days unfortunately.

Alexeev was no ordinary man and influenced me beyond words. The first to break the 'impossible' 500lb barrier and carried the record for some 25 years until another great Russian took the title

So anyway. The one evening I was doing lats, Latissimus dorsi, at my local gym, (you sit on a bench and pull a bar down behind your head to exercise your back). In those days the machine cord wasn’t a steel lanyard, (and it was before the blame culture and ‘I’ll sue your ass’). It was a fabric of some sort which snapped as I pulled a 20lb bar downwards with the weight of Daniel Lambert on the other end! The bar, complete with my pulling force, came crashing down on the back of my head!

The machine was in a separate room from the main gym but others eventually came in to see what the commotion was and the unusual silence. I remember picking my stupid NH specs off the floor and as I tried to put them back on my face I wondered what the wet thing was I could feel dripping down my head. I put my hand on my, then, hairy bonce and when I saw the colour of my hand, combined with the unusual silence in the gym, I began to panic somewhat. (I can hear people thinking ‘Hmm, that explains a lot’. Yeah, okay. Very funny )

The manager said “I’ll take you to hospital”. (He didn’t know if it was bad and for all I know or remember I could have been knocked unconscious) I remember feeling guilty for interrupting the manager’s routine actually but he insisted on taking me to Selly Oak Hospital.

As I was bundled into his car with a towel on my head I remember saying “please tell mum where I am”. (Well, I was very young.) Had some stitches but otherwise okay, arguably

The moral: Always check your equipment first.

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

One that I had years ago sticks in my mind .... had a Triumph Herald with a slight water leak, going home from work one night, started engine then thought I'd best check the water before setting off. Opened bonnet removed radiator cap (engine still running), saw it did need water so topped it up. As I was replacing the radiator cap I dropped it, instinct took over and my hand shot out to catch it ..... straight into the rotating cooling fan. In those days fans were driven straight from the crank via belt, and were made of pressed steel. For some reason it wasn't at all painful, and my hand though feeling numb and feeling a bit "strange" appeared to be pretty much undamaged, so I just thought .... hmm that was lucky and set off home. About 2 miles down the road my hand started to feel a bit sore and I started to feel nauseus, then the pain escalated to an indescribable level, and I was very near to fainting. Fortunately as the pain & nausea grew I'd pulled into the side of the road and stopped. After about 10 mins the pain and nausea subsided and I drove home, hand still a bit painful but not too bad, and no lasting damage . The point is ... if you have had a bit of a scrape, even though at the time you feel ok, it's probably best to sit down for a while and see if there is any delayed reaction effect before doing anything else ... like driving!

Just thought of another really dumb one ... long hair, leaning over a vice drilling hole in peice of metal ... you guessed already! hair gets caught in drill bit and winds in towards head at alarming rate ... managed to let go of drill trigger in time to save head from any serious damage, just a small skin puncture .... but if drill trigger had been locked on ....