Death on bus 25 years earlier

As of the 23rd May 2022 this website is archived and will receive no further updates.

understandinguncertainty.org was produced by the Winton programme for the public understanding of risk based in the Statistical Laboratory in the University of Cambridge. The aim was to help improve the way that uncertainty and risk are discussed in society, and show how probability and statistics can be both useful and entertaining.

Many of the animations were produced using Flash and will no longer work.

About 15 years ago I was casually talking to a middle aged woman in Devon where she had moved some years earlier. Whilst chatting I told her I had originally come from Nazeing in Essex to which she replied that her parents had lived there. I said that my mother had since moved from Nazeing to Broxbourne in Hertfordshire. In response to this she advised that her father had died on a bus travelling between Nazeing and Broxbourne some 25 years before. I was on that bus! I was about 15 years old and on the bus with my older sister when a man ran to catch the bus as it pulled away. He got on the bus and sat behind us. It was soon evident that his breathing was distressed and my sister got the driver to stop the bus. Whilst my sister attended to the man the driver flagged down a passing ambulance. Unfortunately the man died. What are the odds of meeting the daughter of the man some 25 years later and 200 miles away (and talking sufficiently to discover the coincidence !) What are the odds of being on that particular bus, at that time, on that day 25 years earlier? The family had never known the details of his final minutes as his wife had not want to know. I was able to put the daughter's mind at rest.
Total votes: 261
Date submitted:Thu, 18 Oct 2012 22:45:47 +0000Coincidence ID:6533