Having a guy run a red light and pull out right in front of us on a highway when were were going about 65.
Also, on a highway in a hilly rural area and having a kid on a go cart come out of a side road right in front of us.
Both of those were disasters that were missed by a split second.
The first 2 incidences I thought of were also on a highway....
Carpooling from work at 6am on a highway in Colorado in the dead of winter, I was taking 3 of my night-shift coworkers home when I hit a patch of ice and the car started fish-tailing. The guy in the passenger seat panicked and the 2 guys in the back seat started yelling, but I managed to focus on my driving.
I took my foot off the accelerator and steered into the fish-tailing as well as I could while gently applying the brakes now and then. I finally made it off the road, and the car slowly slid down a slight embankment until it gently came to rest against a chain-link fence.
The guys in the backseat patted my shoulders, saying Good Job and stuff, but the guy in the front passenger seat kissed the ground and never carpooled with me again.
The other incident was when I was driving my kids to their grandparent's house. I was doing about 50-55 mph on an empty remote highway in the middle of the night in late October, a few days before Halloween, when I saw a row of orange cones across my lane.
Because the highway was unlit, and there were no signs about roadwork ahead, the cones seemed to come out of nowhere, and I plowed right through them. I thought I was probably going to fall into a gaping hole on the other side of the cones, so slammed on the brakes. The car started to go into a spin, so I steered into it. Then it started to spin the other way, and I steered into it, and I just kept doing that until it finally straightened out.
My poor kids, man. They didn't scream or cry or anything, but they looked horrified, all 3 of them. The oldest was 8 at the time, and the baby was 4, and they were all wearing a seatbelt.
I pulled off the road and checked them all, and we took a break while my little girl drank a juice-box. I'm 100% certain the cones were a Halloween prank, so I kept my ears perked for any giggling morons in the bushes or whatever. I'm glad I didn't hear anyone, because I was
really pissed off. I wouldn't have
hurt them ...physically... but I'm sure I wouldn't have made the situation any better for my kids.