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Harrison Ford Could Have Died In Star Wars Set Incident, Court Hears (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader writes: While filming Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Harrison Ford almost died when he was crushed by a hydraulic door on the set of the Millennium Falcon. He was reportedly knocked to the ground and crushed beneath the heavy door when he walked on to the set not believing it to be live. The 71-year-old actor suffered a broken left leg. Prosecutor Andrew Marshall said the door "could have killed somebody. The fact that it didn't was because an emergency stop was activated," he said. The company responsible, Foodles Production, pleaded guilty to two breaches under health and safety legislation, one count under section two of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, which related to a breach of duty in relation to employees, and a second under section three, a breach over people not employed by the company. The lawyer for Foodles Production, which is owned by Disney, said the company would contest the level of risk involved on August 22nd at Aylesbury crown court.
Harrison Ford could have had a brain aneurysm on the set and died, but he didn't. He did however have a large piece of machinery crush his leg. Did this large piece of machinery "almost" crush more vital parts of his body? That depends on whatever your personal threshold for the word "almost" is. Given the proximity of the leg to vital organs in a human body, I don't have a problem with the phrase "almost died". I think I'd prefer "almost killed" because "almost died" seems to imply that he almost died from the injuries he did get, not from the injuries he almost got, but I think that's splitting hairs.