Call it good judgment, fate, karma, coincidence, or whatever you'd like, but every now and then, you hear a story about someone making an impulsive or out-of-character decision that ends up being incredibly important. So redditor u/Dawn_Cyborgzzz asked, "Which 'You know what? Just to be safe' thing did you do that ended up saving you later?" Here's some of what people said (and some of these honestly gave me chills).
1. "I dropped my high school girlfriend off, and for some reason I immediately locked the passenger door. No more than 10 minutes later, I was stopped at a red light and some sketchy-looking dude tried to open my door. I have no idea why I locked the car door, because I never made a habit of that, but I also have no idea what would have happened if that guy had gotten into my truck."
2. "Normally, I have to admit I'm pretty impressionable and I cave in to peer pressure. But one time when I was younger, I was hanging with my friends and a couple of older high school guys I'd only met that day. My girlfriends were all fawning over them, but I could tell they were idiots. They went out for a drive together, but I had a gut instinct that I didn't trust these guys. I called my parents and went home. I found out the next morning that they had a serious crash. One of the girls wasn't wearing her seatbelt and hit her head on the dash. She was in a coma for six months, then in intensive care and rehabilitation for years. I still can't believe that not going with the flow on this one day could have saved my life."
3. "My dad lost his glasses once and was going to just use his old prescription. Then at the last minute, he decided to go to the optometrist in case something had changed with his vision. Turns out he had a tear in his retina and was booked for surgery within 24 hours. It was bad enough that the doctors said he probably would have gone blind soon had they not caught it."
4. "I was at a sleepover as a kid, and I was a little concerned because my mom seemed oddly tired earlier that day. I went home early because I was worried. I was 14 years old at the time. At the end of the night, I ended up calling an ambulance for my mom because she was complaining about her heart and I was the only one home with her. She was incapable of forming coherent sentences and would probably not have gotten the help she needed if I wasn't there."
5. "I was getting ready for school one day while my mom was vomiting in the bathroom. She thought it was just a stomach bug and told me to go to school, but then she mentioned that her arm hurt. Something didn’t sit right with me, so I called an ambulance from downstairs. Once the ambulance arrived and took her to the hospital, she proceeded to have three cardiac arrests (and needed defibrillation each time). She ended up getting double bypass surgery. The paramedics told me she would have died about five minutes after I left the house had I not called."
6. "I had a routine mammogram a few years back that had a spot on it. I almost didn't have it biopsied because the doctor thought it was just a little spot of scar tissue, but I decided to regardless. You guessed it: cancer. Luckily I caught it early, and I'm doing fine now."
7. "I was driving in California's South Lake Tahoe on a clear road, but I saw a local throwing on snow chains despite the fact there was no snow in the area. I decided to be safe and put mine on too. About 30 minutes later, I was in one of the worst snowy driving conditions I’ve ever seen. It was a whiteout in a snowstorm that eventually caused the complete shutdown of the roads. I passed car crash after car crash, but I had just enough traction on my tires to feel somewhat comfortable moving 15 mph. It went from sunny with no clouds to blinding white darkness in an hour. Thank goodness I decided to put on those snow chains."
8. "I had booked a rental car for a trip to Iceland using my credit card points. Two days before, I canceled and booked it with my credit card, which provides rental vehicle coverage. It looked like the weather was going to be suspect, and I figured I should have the extra protection. While in Iceland, we got into an accident for which we were not at fault. The car was almost totaled, and I had to pay more than $12,000 out of pocket to the company. It took a few months and a ton of paperwork, but my credit card company eventually refunded all of it. I still think about how lucky I was for changing the booking last minute 'just in case.'"
9. "I saved the GPS location of my vehicle on Google Maps before exploring a national forest with a road trip buddy. We grabbed some fishing poles and headed out toward the nearest water location on our map to hopefully catch a couple of fish. Turns out it was a swamp and not a lake, so we got incredibly turned around. We didn't go so far from where we had parked, but we ended up on the other side of the swamp without even realizing it. It was drizzling rain, the sun started setting, and we spotted some bear tracks before we found the car. Had I not saved those GPS coordinates, it would have been a cold, wet night in the woods at a minimum, but more likely a search and rescue situation."
10. "I was remodeling my house and took out a loan, for which I was required to get my house appraised. I found out that my house was worth $100,000 more than I had it insured for. I raised my limits on the home insurance to $50,000 more than the appraised value, all in anticipation of completing my renovations. Only two weeks later and the house burned to the ground due to a faulty bathroom fan that I did not touch."
11. "My mom and I were home alone, and I was getting ready to go to a party. I came upstairs and found her with the carbon monoxide alarm on the coffee table. She said it was beeping, and apparently once (years ago) in our last house, it was malfunctioning and giving a false alarm. She assumed that was happening again. I was about to leave, but something was nagging at me, even though my mom insisted it was fine. After some arguing, I insisted we call the fire department. They came, and the levels of carbon monoxide were so high in the basement that they said anyone sleeping down there would already be dead. One of the firefighters pulled me aside and said if I hadn’t called, I likely would have come home to my mother dead."
12. "I had a car sitting on jack stands because I needed to do some transmission work. Before climbing under it, I thought it would be a good idea to rock the car around. One of the jack stands was not in the right spot and the car slipped off it, slamming down on the front disc brakes. It easily would have killed me."
13. "While pregnant with me, my mom was wrapping up an OB-GYN appointment. The doctor had already left the room, and my mom was gathering herself to leave. She mentioned to the nurse that her contacts were messing with her and she had spots in her vision. The nurse stopped and asked her to sit down. She brought the doctor back in to be safe, and she ended up delivering me via emergency C-section. Without anyone knowing it, she had spontaneously developed preeclampsia. Her blood pressure was rocketing sky high. She was dangerously close to having a seizure but ended up OK because she mentioned the spots in her vision and the nurse listened."
14. "My friend and his wife were having their first child. They had gotten a big packet of information and paperwork to fill out before the due date to make things easier. There were also brochures for genetic testing and cord blood banking. My friend said that he looked at the front of the brochure, and his wife asked if they should do it. It's not cheap (think: a couple of thousand bucks to save cord blood and a few hundred a year after that to store it), but my friend said yes. Their daughter was born later that year. Three years after her birth, they had a boy who was born with an immune disorder (no white blood cells). Thanks to their decision, his big sister's cord blood and stem cells were able to be used as treatment."
15. "Once, before my family left for a two-week vacation, my husband decided to turn off the water and drain the faucets. I thought he was being silly. But the power went out while we were gone and everything froze. He likely saved our house and everything in it from burst pipes and flooding."
16. "When I was a student, I’d do my own work on my car to save on auto repair bills. One day after changing my brake pads, I was driving on the freeway and felt a slight shuddering through the steering wheel. Given that you’re not supposed to stop on a freeway unless it’s a real emergency, I was reluctant to pull over to check if anything was wrong. Plus, I'd worked on the car just that morning. But I decided to check, just to be safe. Turns out I hadn’t even finger-tightened the wheel nuts. I'd only threaded them about a half-turn each."
17. "In college, I would always wear my helmet while riding my motorcycle, but the majority of the time, I wouldn't wear my riding jacket because it was too bulky to carry around between classes. One day, it was a bit too cold out for just a hoodie, and I decided to deal with the bulk of the jacket and wear it. I ended up laying the bike down at 40-ish mph and got slammed into the road on my right side. My shoulder was sore, but there was no lasting damage. I can't imagine how things would have turned out if I didn't have the extra shoulder padding."
18. "I gave birth to premature twins. There was a month gap in insurance coverage between me quitting my job and my husband’s new job’s start date, so I opted for COBRA. I had 30 days to add my kids as dependents, and I told my ex-boss to inform the insurance company so they would be added to my plan quickly after birth. Right before the deadline, I decided to double-check coverage, just to be safe. I emailed my ex-boss, who talked to the insurance company, which said they'd 'lost' my request. If I had assumed it was taken care of, I would have been on the hook for over a month of NICU time for two kids. It’s been over a decade, and I still break out into a sweat just thinking about it. I saw the total invoice at one point, and it was for $500,000 before insurance."
19. "I was undergoing pilot training and was pretty new, so I was feeling the pressure to perform. I walked out to preflight a plane for a solo flight. After I did my walk-around, it was time to check the oil. I noticed something was wonky about the dipstick of the Cessna 172 I was supposed to be flying. I almost convinced myself that everything must be fine because the guys before me had just flown in. But then I thought, Well, to be safe, I should actually pack this up and go ask someone at the flight school exactly how to check the oil in this case. Turns out, the dipstick had broken off during the previous flight that had landed just minutes before, and it had slid straight into the engine, where the crankcase had been chomping away metal from the tip, and that metal was now circulating in the engine. The aircraft was grounded and it was extremely dangerous to fly. If I'd taken off in that plane, I'd probably be dead."
20. "One day it randomly occurred to me to purchase pet insurance for my dog. A few months later, my dog suffered a severe back injury and needed surgery to reverse the paralysis. It was expensive out of pocket, but without the reimbursement from insurance, it would’ve been so much worse!"
21. "I went into the doctor for a routine check and decided to mention that I thought my neck looked fuller on one side than the other. I assumed I had swollen lymph nodes, since my son had just started daycare and we were constantly sick with something. She felt around and told me it felt close to my thyroid. Turns out I had thyroid cancer that had spread to my lymph nodes, and it was hidden under a muscle. Even at my physical just a month prior, the doctor hadn't noticed anything. I'm forever thankful for my own vanity that I mentioned it."
22. "I put only one of my work shoes in the hotel safe, along with my valuables. This little 'just in case' trick has stopped me in my tracks from forgetting my wallet and passport in a foreign country."
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.