People Share The Things They Did “Just to Be Safe” That Ended Up Saving Their Lives

Making sure that you lock the door before you leave the house might just seem like second nature to you, but there are plenty of other things that you do at the spur of the moment that actually safe you a lot of hassle in the long haul.

These people shared their real stories of the small actions they did that saved them a lot of time and clean up later.

Always Have a Backup

About two weeks before my dissertation defense, I was headed out of town for the weekend. At the last minute, I decided to make a quick backup of my dissertation documents to a flash drive as a tertiary backup. I already had a time machine backup, as well as a Dropbox backup.

 Sure enough, my laptop blew out on that trip and I lost all my files.

No worries I thought, I have three backups that are current. After replacing my hard drive and reinstalling the MacOS, I went to recover from my time machine backup, and somehow the previous eight months of backups had been corrupted.

I was able to restore my machine but lost all my files (including photos, music, and dissertation documents) as of eight months ago. Okay, don’t panic. I have Dropbox.

I logged in, started downloading synced files, but to my surprise, the one folder where I kept my actual dissertation in, had not synced properly. Thankfully, I still had all of my dissertation work files and research files.

I had no current copy of my actual FULL dissertation except for a two-month-old copy in my email outbox that I had sent to my advisor.

I thought of all those hours of writing… All those sleepless nights… All that time drafting figures… All the headaches and lost time… All for nothing. I was so monumentally screwed. The two months before a dissertation is generally when the largest block of writing takes place.

But then I remembered my flash drive.

That flash drive saved my butt. I only ended up losing a few documents in the end. Grad students, always make at least three backups of your dissertation.

Story credit: Reddit /lakewoodhiker

Something Felt Off

I let my partner drive my new car around a parking lot, literally for two minutes. He said offhand that the steering felt off to him. He’s a car guy, so even though I couldn’t feel anything weird, the next time I went for an oil change I asked them to check it out.

They didn’t want to check it but I insisted. They came back and said I couldn’t drive it home because one of the sensors was messed up and my steering could go out at any time. That two-minute drive around a parking lot probably saved my life.

Story credit: Reddit /ajgoulet

At the Last Second

I took my first ever solo vacation when I was 24 to Ireland. When I got there, I was tired from the flight and confused by the car rental system (I had never rented a car before). I accidentally overpaid for the total coverage Cadillac insurance package.

When I got to the place where I was staying, I called my dad about it.

He called the car company, figured things out, and told me that the next day I could drive back to the airport and get my money back for a less crazy insurance package.

At the last second, I figured I’d never driven in another country, much less switching to the opposite side of the road, so I decided to just keep the insurance.

Halfway through the trip, I made a boneheaded mistake, hit another car, and totaled my rental car. I didn’t pay a penny.

Story credit: Reddit /Ohtarello

Stay in Your Lane

Last year, my husband, myself and our two kids were on our way home after having my nails done for my birthday. We were on a four-lane highway and usually, we stay in the far left lane.

We were still in the second to the left lane when we unexpectedly hit some traffic. We decided to just stay in that lane to be safe. Just as we slowed down to a stop, we heard a massive bang as two trucks sandwiched a red car.

It was exactly where we would’ve been if we were in the far left lane. It was so rough; I picked pieces of glass out of my hair because my window was open and pieces of red car paint flew everywhere.

Story credit: Reddit /Kitty_D