Oh, come on. It's not like youtube is littered with examples of complete idiots trying for a Darwin award by fiddling with struts, is it? Oh, hang on........
once upon a time......., well actually 40 years ago at the tender age of 18 I started playing with cars, I had my first car a 1.3 canary yellow Cortina with a lime green interior spent every penny I had buying it, it was so hideous it should have been classed as assault forcing people to look at it but it was mine
anyway after a couple of weeks I discovered one of the front struts was leaking badly so I blew my wages for the week getting a new one but the only tools I had was a cheap socket set made from toffee but I did know you had to compress the old spring to remove it to fit it to the new strut but I was brassic and had no idea how much tension the springs were under so I put some heavy duty cable ties around the spring while the weight of the car was still on it and removed it feeling very pleased with myself, now here is where the male of the species start cringing, I sat on the floor with the strut held between my legs resting against the crown jewels and started to remove the nut after a few turns I decided this wasn't the most comfortable position and the nut was now loose so I stood it up as it no longer needed to be held tight good job really as the next turn saw the spring, topmount and my ratchet flying through the air and landing in the neighbours garden over the road leaving me with a broken little finger and needing a change of underwear.
I'm more than happy to accept any amount of mocking after sharing this story if it makes just one person stop and think about what could happen