Man who thought he had 10 seconds left to live after tragic accident explained what he did

If you thought you had just seconds to live, what would you do?

That's the experience one man lived through as he suffered a horrific accident and thought he was going to die, and believed he was only 10 seconds away from death.

It'd be a hell of a thing to go through, but he made a video sharing his experiences and laying out what was going on in his head during what he thought might have been his final moments.

On TikTok, Richard North explained that in 2001 he was involved in a car crash, hitting a lamppost which smashed through both of his legs.

The emergency services spent almost an hour trying to cut Richard out of the wreckage of his car, until a message from the hospital said they'd need to cut his legs off with an acetylene torch.

However, one of the firefighters wanted to have one last go at freeing Richard from the wreckage and 'let out an enormous roar' as he was able to pull wreckage off the man and finally free him.

"When I sat in that car my heartbeat had gone down to 18 beats a minute, they told me this there and then while I was there," Richard said of the situation he was in.

"They kind of were saying goodbye to me, the paramedic, she was a lovely lady, she was comforting me but she was saying goodbye and telling them that my heartbeat had gone to 18 beats a minute.

"I thought I'd got 10 seconds left to live, so I started counting down until I got to one and thought 'then I'll close my eyes and I'll pass away'.

"I said my goodbyes in my mind to my family and thought I would then pass away.

"I got to one or zero and I counted again, 'I'll do 10 more seconds' I said."

Richard added that between his counting were thoughts that even if he lost his legs he'd still be able to live and work from a wheelchair.

Despite being in such pain there were 'positive thoughts going through my mind', and he kept counting down 10 seconds after each other for an hour until they were able to rescue him from the wreckage and get him to hospital.

Plenty found Richard's story to be 'incredible', and the man himself said his continuous counting down from 10 kept him alive as he 'pushed myself through the pain' and kept going.

Meanwhile, someone else suggested that if they thought they had just 10 seconds to live they'd 'try and do a backflip'.