木村：きのう自動車事故に会われたそうですね。お怪我はありませんでしたか。
佐々木：ええ、危機一髪のところで助かりました。
Kiki ippatsu
Kimura: Kinoo jidosha jiko ni awareta soo desu ne. O-kega wa arimasen deshita ka.
Sasaki: Ee, kiki ippatsu no tokoro de tasukarimashita.
Kimura: I heard you were involved in a traffic accident yesterday. You were not hurt, were you?
Sasaki: No, it was a close call though.
Kiki ippatsu describes a dangerous situation in which you come close to danger, but escape by a hair's breadth.
The sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway recently alarmed the whole world. After something like this happens it is enough to put you off traveling on the subway at all. As it happens, my brother-in-law was on the subway that morning, but he was in the second carriage along, so fortunately he was unharmed. Even so, his eyes hurt and he had to see a doctor. Hontoo ni kiki ippatsu deshita ne (It was a close shave, was it not?)
My own brush with death came when I was driving along one day, and wanted to change lanes. I switched on my right blinker, but just as I was moving into the right-hand lane something crashed into my car. For a moment everything went black, and then the next thing I knew. I had hit the guard rail and slammed to a halt. Kiki ippatsu de shinu tokoro deshita (I escaped death by the skin of my teeth).
It turned out that a truck had run into the side of my carjust rear of the driver's seat. If it had hit me 30 centimeters further forward, I would have been in either heaven or hospital at the moment. Kiki ippatsu de tengoku ni ikanakute sumimashita (I came dangerously close to meeting my maker). (I have not done anything so bad that I deserve to go to hell, of course.)
Currently, Matsuda and NEC are jointly developing an emergency braking system that is due to go into production next year. With this system, when you are driving at 50 kilo-meters per hour and you get within 20 meters of a parked car in front of you, the brakes automatically come on. What happens when both cars are moving though, I am not quite sure. Kiki ippatsu de tasukatta to wa ie, shibaraku kuruma no unten wa shitaku arimasen (I may have had a narrow escape, but I still don't feel like driving for a while).
The writer is a professor at Yokohama National University.