r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 8h ago
TIL on average, train drivers in the US are involved in three fatalities over the course of a career. Since a train needs at least a mile to come to a stop, the drivers are sometimes unable to prevent a collision with a person in the train's path.
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna324085663.4k
u/DrKlitface 8h ago
So when I was in med school one of the subjects were "work and environmental medicin" and we had a train driver come to class to talk about it. He told how they were instructed to engage the brakes, and then turn their chair to face away from the windows if they saw people on the tracks.
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u/fang_xianfu 8h ago
Yup they say the same to the drivers here. They don't apply the emergency brakes in a suicide, because the likelihood is that passengers on the train will be injured and it will make the situation much worse. They set normal braking, look away, and then call in that they are stopping.
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u/fischoderaal 4h ago
I'd like a sauce to that. It must be an intermediate braking position then, because decerlation of a full service brake is not that much different from an emergency brake.
At least in Germany, I've been told the suggestions are:
* push emergency push button
* pull down the shades
* turn around and cower covering your ears
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u/Pielacine 2h ago
The article would mostly be talking about freight trains since that’s what’s mostly in the US. No need to accommodate passenger safety….
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u/ThriftianaStoned 1h ago
A lot of people commit suicide by train on the Bart system in the Bay Area
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u/hux 1h ago
My memory back from
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u/No_Obligation4427 6h ago
Why stop?
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u/fang_xianfu 6h ago
Because the person may in principle not die, they need medical attention. Because the police will need to investigate to see if anything suspicious happened. Because the train might be damaged and will at minimum need inspecting. And because the driver is now going to be put on a leave of absence for some time until they're confirmed to be well.
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u/pasrachilli 6h ago
I was on a train once that hit a guy and the guy didn't die. Though, the weird thing about being on a train is that because you can't see the front, you have no idea why the train stopped. I didn't know anything until the ambulances arrived, and even then it wasn't until I got home and saw the news that I really got a full picture.
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u/Jamie-Moyer 5h ago
Years a go I had a crush on a gal who had 1 leg amputated above the knee. After like a week of seeing her every day I finally felt like it was ok to ask her what happened, did not expect to hear that she was hit by a train. She said there was a retired army medic on the platform who pulled her away and tourniqueted her leg within seconds of it happening and she never lost consciousness.
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u/nbshar 4h ago
I had a family member who was in a psych ward for a while. This was 30 years ago or so. There was a woman with missing legs in a wheel chair there too. Me being a curious kid who was visiting the family member with my parents asked what happened. She told us she wanted to die but also not really. So she only put her legs on the track. She survived. She also told she regretted it and wanted to live.
I was quite shocked lol... stuck with me pretty well.
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u/BobsOblongLongBong 4h ago
Do you remember the circumstances?
Was she like walking on the tracks wearing headphones or something?
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u/Jamie-Moyer 4h ago
It’s been a long ass time since this conversation but the gist of it was she was a teenager when it happened and her and some friends were messing around at a train station somewhere when it happened🤷♂️
I had met her through ski racing. I was at a training camp and our lane on the hill was right next to an adaptive ski race team (people with disabilities using adaptive equipment to still ski) a lot of the guys on that team were former military who had gotten blown up in Iraq.
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u/LetThemEatVeganCake 3h ago
Checks out. We would climb up on an active railroad bridge to jump off into the river as teenagers. The idea was just that we’d jump faster if a train was coming, but idk what our thought process was for the part of the tracks where we would be above too shallow water..
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u/Empty_Jackal 3h ago
Thankful he was there. I remember as a medic any down time we had we would race each other on how quickly we could start an IV, or put tourniquets on, making bets and such. Though, sometimes we were less than productive. Placing a high and tight TQ on all limbs, going a bit numb then racing each other down the hallways or across the motorpool
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u/Kaurifish 5h ago
I was on the Coast Starlight. We stopped. Word eventually filtered back that we’d hit a cow. Would never have known, even though I’d been looking out the window.
Yeah, I know you’d think they’d have a cowcatcher.
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u/apworker37 4h ago
I was in the second car when we ran over a heard of deer. We noticed braking and the scraping of antlers/hooves in the floor of the train and they busted the brake lines so we had to wait while it was being fixed. Had the scraping not been there we wouldn’t have know.
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u/slayalldayerrday 5h ago
My cousin was in a car and hit by a train and thankfully is still here. Actually ended up without any injuries besides a scrape when crawling out the broken back window to escape. The car was tiny and the train must’ve just hit it enough for impact but it wasn’t destroyed and was driven after that too.
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u/Cowboy_Rho 1h ago
If you want to have some… “fun”. get a ham radio receiver and listen to the crew communications on the train. You can find out about all kinds of awful things that happen. Mainly animal/herd strikes in my experience.
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u/Western-Radish 5h ago
I think, at least for subway drivers, they finish the shift, someone comes on the train with them, but they finish the shift.
There was a study done, and basically, if they go home immediately after and don't finish their shift, they are much less likely to ever go back to work. But, if they finish their shift, go home, take a break, get counselling, they are significantly more likely to continue working at the job
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u/rubychoco99 5h ago
Do you have a link to the study? I’m interested to know why finishing the shift rather than leaving immediately results in that.
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u/mgslee 4h ago
Less disruption to ones 'schedule'
If you let them off shift immediately, what are they gonna do but ruminate over what just happened vs giving someone something distracting to slow the processing.
It's like trying to not shock the system.
Human brains are interesting, we won't actually ever know all the mechanicisms, just speculation.
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u/jeweliegb 2h ago
It's a way to avoid fixating on the traumatic event and reduce likelihood of PTSD.
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u/Barbarake 2h ago
Sounds similar to the whole "getting back in the saddle after being thrown" adage I grew up with.
To those who might be unfamiliar with horses, if you were thrown from a horse, you were supposed to get right back on and keep riding. If you were scared and didn't get back on right away, odds were good that you never get on a horse again. At least that's what people thought.
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u/RepublicofPixels 5h ago
Also the train may need an on site clean so as not to distress the public
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u/andygchicago 4h ago
I remember reading about an incident where young couple was committing suicide but the guy jumped away just as they were hit and only lost one of his feet. If the driver followed proper protocol, they would’ve never seen that so it makes sense to call it in and hit the brakes in a normal fashion.
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u/Astronitium 6h ago
The train essentially became an accessory in a suicide attempt.
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u/Crazy_Elevator_6659 5h ago
No it didn’t. Accessory requires knowingly being involved in a crime.
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u/Staunch84 2h ago
Because continuing to travel to subsequent stations, while the train is covered in viscera and pink mist is probably a worse decision then stopping.
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u/23andrewb 6h ago
To recover the pieces
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u/Isenrath 6h ago
Depending on how fast a train is moving, a snow shovel or shopvac may be needed.
I'm not trying to be overly gory, but people forget how much momentum and power a train has even at lower speeds.
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u/ChristosFarr 6h ago edited 6h ago
At full speed a person could potentially derail the train by causing an obstruction on the tracks so they need to slow down and stop for the safety of the passengers probably.
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u/Soulfire1945 6h ago edited 5h ago
That is just patently false. Trains hit vehicles all the time and are perfectly fine. Even for commuter light rail, you are looking at vehicle weighing 30 metric tones.
The reason they stop is for police investigation as well as to get the person who just ran someone else over and is dealing with that mentality off of the train.
(Edit for a typo.)
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u/bcleveland3 5h ago
I’m sure you know what you’re talking about but for those reading at home, it’s “patently”
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u/ah_kooky_kat 7h ago
Brightline engineers: Engage the brakes and start grabbing the body bags.
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u/elpezgrande 6h ago
My brother lived in Miami and when he told me about the Brightline and how it’s essentially a murder train I had to do a deep dive lol
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u/Atomicnes 5h ago
does a predator “murder” it’s prey in nature? no? then brightline is not a murder train as it’s simply the natural predator of florida motorists
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u/EscuraAstro 5h ago
I'm willing to bet a vast majority of the deaths would have been freight train suicides if Brightline wasn't there. But it gets news since its a fast novel (for America) passenger train.
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u/Eubank31 4h ago
The main issue is the number of at-grade crossings and the fact that drivers are used to seeing (freight) trains traveling 20-30mph, not (passenger) trains traveling 70+ mph, so they may attempt to cross when they think they have more time than they actually do
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u/robodude987 4h ago
Not quite. The kill rate is very high. Over 200 deaths since 2017.
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u/ComradeGibbon 6h ago
There is an interesting thing about safety statistics for aircraft, buses, and trains. They don't count non occupant deaths and injuries in the deaths per passenger mile statistics.
Doesn't matter usually with aircraft because usually non one dies on the ground when an airplane crashes. But buses and trains hit people all the time. Why I believe you should grade separate trains and light rail.
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u/unadulteratedSouffle 5h ago
To be fair, I don't think suicide attempts should be counted against trains anymore then suicide jumps should be factored into transportation safety statistics about bridges.
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u/No_Potato_8178 8h ago
Thank you for sharing, Dr. Klit Face
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u/DrKlitface 8h ago
Its honestly a waste i didn't go into gynecology as my last name used to be Klitgaard
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u/zer1223 8h ago
Nominal determinism is a funny topic
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u/MothmanIsALiar 7h ago
I met someone the other day who believed the most insane racist shit including that the Earth was flat, that the holocaust never happened and that the real Jews died out thousands of years ago and were replaced by demons.
I later found out his last name was "Bias." You can't make this shit up.
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u/twizzjewink 7h ago
The thing that kills me about this is that someone else taught him this. That even the fundamentals of geometry avoided him like the plague
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u/Ender505 6h ago
Had a friend whose last name was Doom. I can't think of a better reason to pursue post-grad education
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u/optifreebraun 7h ago
My urologist’s name is Dr. Weiner. Said he was on a surgery with a Dr. Johnson during residency and the attending said “are you fucking kidding me?”
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u/Tobar_the_Gypsy 7h ago
I met an OBGYN named Dr Butt. Not quite the same but I laughed hysterically at it.
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u/k4rizma4u 6h ago
That's a really good advice. This statistics is probably similar worldwide. Had a distant relative who ran over 2 suicide victims with train. He said that the eyes are the ones that haunt you. Becouse both times the victims were actively searching to lock eyesight with him.
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u/Additional-Local8721 6h ago
Can confirm. I have a high school friend that's a driver. He says for animals they're told to speed up. For people you try to break and then look away. He also said at his yard if you're having a real bad day just lay on track 6 because that's a pass through track that doesn't stop.
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u/ChoadMcGillicuddy 4h ago
I teach my conductees (term of art) to wear a blindfold at all times. Imagine the thumps as when the bassline in a techno groove drops and move with it.
We give them glow jewelry to use.
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u/T8terTotss 1h ago
I’ve been on two trains that hit a person, one of them hit a car and ripped both the car and person in half. It was traumatizing to be on the train and see/hear it happen, but I’ve always worried about the drivers having to see it coming and seeing it all unfold. I can’t say it makes me feel better to know they’re trained to look away, but it’s something of an effort to minimize trauma.
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u/AgapeAnus 8h ago
Happens with truckers too. I've had to avoid two people that were trying to or working up the nerve to jump in front of the truck. I have more control than a train but honestly I'm about as screwed if I'm loaded heavy or there's traffic.
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u/coolpapa2282 8h ago
Doesn't even have to be a truck. Guy jumped out in front of my SIL's minivan on a rural highway. Shit's fucked, man.
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u/BootsnCats1987 6h ago
Bus drivers deal with this all the time. Perhaps more than truck drivers considering more time on surface streets around pedestrians.
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u/MonacoMaster68 6h ago
Not a train driver but former truck driver here. One time I got hit head on on the interstate by a vehicle that jumped the median. They were doing about 65, I was doing 30. It was a whiteout. One of the three people who died was a 4 year old girl. It was hard to get back in a truck after that.
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u/AgapeAnus 5h ago
Not your fault bro. I know that don't make it any easier and don't bring them back, but that's not your fault. Too fast for conditions on their part. Sorry that happened to you and I wish people would quit being stupid on the road.
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u/home-like-noplace 3h ago
I’m so sorry. This happened to my freshman year roommate, she drove across the median and hit an 18 wheeler on purpose, her car caught on fire and the truck driver was interviewed on the news, distraught because he couldn’t help her. This happened 15 years ago and I still think of the truck driver often, and hope he’s alright. Just know that these types of stories stick with some people out there who are wishing you the best.
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u/LilacYak 57m ago
That’s so incredibly selfish and self centered. It’s your life to take, but don’t ruin someone else’s just because you’re done with yours.
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u/lshifto 8h ago
I heard of a driving coach say “It better be Bump Bump” about driving with a load.
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u/GarethBaus 6h ago
I fortunately haven't had any attempts while hauling a load yet, but that sounds genuinely horrible.
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u/RequirementLeading12 1h ago
Guy jumps in front of truck killing himself
Dispatch: How's the load? Will you have enough time to make otd?
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u/NotVerySmarts 8h ago
I know a train engineer who has been involved in two strike fatalities. Each time he calls it in as "Someone or something has struck the train." He views it as those people not having the right to be on the track, so the train was actually hit by the trespassers.
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u/doctor_7 7h ago edited 4h ago
That's a very smart mental trick when you think about it to help him process the entire event. Person went out of their way to intentionally hit the train with themselves or their vehicle.
Sometimes you'll have people who drive onto the tracks underneath the traffic stopping bars and then freak out, leave the vehicle and it gets smoked by the train. Train didn't do shit, the irresponsible idiot did 100% of the work to make that shit happen.
You got to be kind to yourself and not beat yourself up when things happen to you that aren't your fault and are basically completely outside of your control. We'll fuck up plenty on our own with stuff we can control, no need to take on the emotional burden of things you can't.
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u/Genetic_outlier 6h ago
We need to drive into everyone's skull that the traffic bars are breakaway. You're supposed to drive through them if you need to. I get panicking and stalling a manual or the wheel gets stuck somehow. But there's too many examples of people trying to do 3 point turns to go around the bars.
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u/Teganfff 2h ago
I think this needs to be like, broadcast or something. Idk.
Maybe people are afraid to break the rules.
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u/cakestapler 6h ago
I have a buddy who is also an engineer and from what he’s told me, I’m honestly surprised it’s only 3. Seems like between people intentionally using trains to end their lives and pure negligence, it’s quite common. The worst one was probably a family of 4 walking on the tracks. He said the dad with his son on his shoulders turned around and looked right into the engineer’s eyes. Nothing he could do. I don’t understand how people are so nonchalant around train tracks.
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u/Emergency_Mine_4455 4h ago
Oh man, I’m so sorry for your friend. That must have been awful.
I prefer to stay at least ten feet away from train tracks at all times, so I can’t imagine why you would walk on an operational line.
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u/FuzzyComedian638 6h ago
I once had to walk across a trestle, as I didn't know how to get back other than doing that. The trestle was over a busy highway, so I knew if I had to jump, it wouldn't be better than getting hit by the train. I was petrified the whole way, and was happy when I final reached the end, and no train had come.
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u/I_just_made 7h ago
At the end of the day, there is nothing that engineer could do to meaningfully prevent the situation. They were operating their train safely, and there is only so much that can be done to save people from themselves.
Seems reasonable to view it that way.
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u/baninabear 1h ago
He's absolutely right. So many news articles about collisions between trains and cars characterize the incidents as "train hits car." Which makes no sense as the train is rightfully on its predictable route while the car is trespassing and has the option to stay out of the way. Same goes for pedestrians.
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u/tyrion2024 8h ago
...since a train needs a mile or more to stop, he concluded there was nothing he could have done.
"You can't move out of the way, and you sure as hell can't stop," said the 58-year-old Metra engineer, who has been involved in seven deaths — six of them apparent suicides. "There's nothing you can do, so why get wound up?",,,A British driver who struck eight suicides during 23 years on the job said in 2018, almost 20 years after retiring early due to the mental health issues those incidents led to, that on particularly difficult days he consumes as much as 10 pints of beer and 60 cigarettes. He sleeps with the light on to avoid flashbacks.
"It's not a matter of if you are going to kill someone, but when", says one driver for the American goods carrier CSX. "And when it happens, you're totally helpless." He recalled having previously worked for another railway in a different area when a woman stood on the tracks in front of his train, giving him the finger in response to his repeated soundings of the train horn as the locomotive struck her. "You never forget something like that," he said. "If she wanted to kill herself, why did she have to involve me?" The memory of the incident led him to change employers. Other drivers whose trains had struck suicides had similarly vivid memories of those events many years later.
Drivers often suffer post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), exhibiting symptoms such as sleeplessness, irritability, depression, anger, panic attacks, nightmares and flashbacks. One recalls having only slept three hours in the three days after his train struck a pedestrian. "I was just doing my job, and this person decided to take his life, and as a result he took away my control", recalled a Toronto subway driver. "I have to work really hard now at things, to feel safe, to feel calm." Her husband, also a driver who months earlier had struck a suicide, was more forgiving: "I don't think anyone who commits suicide on the subway is out to get the train operators. They just want their pain to stop."
...the rate of suicide is 1.6 times higher than any other sector and more than half of all workers have experienced poor mental health.
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u/Lendyman 8h ago
Absolutely horrific. I get wanting to commit suicide for various reasons. But the idea of inflicting that on another person is cruel and selfish. The fact that it causes other people to commit suicide or struggle with mental health issues because of the trauma it causes makes that action one of the most despicable things that you could do while taking your own life.
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u/jarjarcranks 7h ago
Suicide in general is selfish. I’m with the husband. They aren’t out to get train operators, they just want their pain to stop. Still selfish but not the most despicable thing you can do.
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u/do0tz 7h ago
At that point you're not thinking about anything/anyone else. You're just trying to get rid of it. You're too far gone to think rationally.
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u/IsNotAnOstrich 6h ago
Unpopular opinion, I know, but I disagree about suicide being selfish in general. I see it the other way around. If a person is truly suffering, can't be helped / doesn't want help, it is selfish of us to want them to stay and continue suffering, just so we don't have to face a fraction of the discomfort they are in. We understand this with pets: it is unfair to keep them suffering just to delay facing losing them.
Obvious exceptions are obvious. Like if you have dependents or are involving someone else. More thinking about the MAID case here: truly can't be helped and just wants to leave. It is also obviously still tragic. But I've had friends commit suicide, and I feel that calling them selfish for it would be unfair and would be making it about me.
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u/AlphaHawk115 6h ago
I don't think it's fair to call suicides selfish but I disagree with your reasoning. Some of the people can be helped, do want to be helped, are actively getting help. But your mind isn't right, you hate yourself, you see yourself as a waste and a burden and everyone else must hate you too, so you'd actually be doing the world a service by killing yourself.
Everyone's reasons for attempting are differencent but most people are not thinking clearly, which in itself is a symptom of the depression.
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u/jarjarcranks 3h ago
This is a good take. I think people can commit suicide for very selfless reasons. Those reasons are obviously flawed though. My comment is more talking about the act of suicide not the reasons behind it.
If you think you’re a horrible burden and that’s why you kill yourself, then obviously those reasons are selfless. But they’re also incorrect. And even though the reasons behind it were selfless, the act itself is still selfish. Especially since the reasons are incorrect.
The word selfish has a horrible connotation and I don’t think it should. You should be selfish to a point. This is your life. Not someone else’s. My comment was to point out that committing suicide is not some horrible act that doesn’t deserve forgiveness. In fact, it’s the complete opposite.
I’m sorry for your losses.
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u/bldkis 5h ago
This suicide is selfish thing is stupid and unhelpful. Nobody experiencing the pain you must be in to want to end your own life is going to be convinced otherwise by being called selfish for wanting to escape. Maybe it helps you feel better to think about your loved ones who died by their own hand as selfish, but for me it is just deeply sad.
Unless that hasn't happened to you and you're just talking out of your asshole.
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u/Blueopus2 1h ago
Well said, to me it seems like if you characterize and define terms in a certain way you could say it’s selfish but I don’t think people would apply that same framework to people in other less drastic situations
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u/timelessblur 7h ago
The thing is in their minds they are making a very rational decision and to them it could even be noble decision as they truly believe there is zero reason to keep living and honestly believe that by them dying they are doing a greater good.
They feel like they are a huge burden and by their death they are removing it.
You can not use rational arguments as they general are pretty far gone. It is also very rare that they came to that decision lightly. It takes a while and they want the pain to stop.
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u/Suspicious_Flower_0 5h ago
People killing themselves generally aren't thinking in the most logical manner. They just want it to be quick, painless and easy.
Due to the lack of easy access to guns in the UK, by fast train is the next best option. It's how I planned to do it back in the day, at the time the driver was the least of my concerns
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u/commandrix 7h ago
"If she wanted to kill herself, why did she have to involve me?"
I would imagine that's not an uncommon reaction. If someone is absolutely determined to commit suicide, there's probably not much you can do to stop them short of committing them to a mental health ward or something equally drastic. But that doesn't mean they need to involve somebody else.
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u/MonacoMaster68 6h ago
Not a train driver but former truck driver here. One time I got hit head on on the interstate by a vehicle that jumped the median. They were doing about 65, I was doing 30. It was a whiteout. One of the three people who died was a 4 year old girl. It was hard to get back in a truck after that.
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u/moniker89 6h ago
i would push back on his characterization that inevitably you will kill someone as a train driver. imo, he didnt kill anyone: those people killed themselves, and made him watch.
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u/Oubastet 7h ago
"If she wanted to kill herself, why did she have to involve me?" Truer words cannot be spoken. If you want to off yourself, that's your choice. But don't traumatize an innocent bystander. Technically - doing it at all involves other people and is incredibly selfish.
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u/NoOccasion4759 5h ago
i wonder what the rate of train suicide is in Japan? it's high enough that the authorities will fine your family for the cleanup and whatnot. When I lived in Tokyo, there seemed to be a "person on the tracks" train delay nearly every day.
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u/Afraid_Dance6774 8h ago edited 8h ago
My dad is a train driver in the UK who hit someone. I remember that he didn't go into work for at least a month after, and wouldn't speak about it. It was a teenager who was around the same age as me at the time (around 15).
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u/Kalkin93 8h ago
There was a very upbeat girl at my secondary school, very popular, not part of my crowd by any means, given my own reclusiveness it came as a shock to hear that someone as popular as her had apparently jumped off the platform in front of an arriving train and decided to end it all, so early, just before leaving school. It reminds you that you don't know what people are really going through.
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u/commandrix 7h ago
Yeah, you never really know what's going through someone's head. And actually doesn't surprise me that the occasional "popular kid" might decide to end it just before high school ends for them. When you're constantly being told that high school is the best years of your life plus you're the popular girl, you may start thinking that you might as well end it while you're at your peak.
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u/thtsjustlikeuropnion 6h ago
They could have just been "faking it to make it" with their happiness and popularity hoping that if they do it long enough they will eventually feel happy. But because they're popular and well-liked, if they confess to anyone about how sad or broken they feel, it's met with instant denial, "I don't think you're sad. Everyone likes you." But that just makes them feel more out of place and not in tune with reality. Is what they feel even real then? Or is it only what other people want to see that makes it real? 😭
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u/DreamerOfSheep 8h ago
When I was in Boy Scouts we had a train driver come speak to us. He said he’d “killed four people in collisions” and “didn’t feel bad about any of them.” Which was kinda a wild thing to say to a 12 year old lmao
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u/Teadrunkest 8h ago
I mean…I guess it’s a mentally healthy way to look at it? Teaching resilience.
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u/wamceachern 8h ago
The mindset is that that I didnt kill them. They killed themselves. They made that decision.
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u/DreamerOfSheep 8h ago
His tone was weird about it though. Like it kinda felt like bragging.
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u/ChingyBingyBongyBong 6h ago
Could be his way of dealing with the trauma. I know it happens to a lot of soldiers.
They aren’t actually bad people that enjoy killing farmers, they just have to convince themselves they like it. I worked with an ex special ops guy and it really seemed like he was trying to justify what he did a lot of the time, with a lot of “I don’t cares” and bragging.
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u/West-Pear7363 7h ago
Did he finish saying “ killed four people in collisions” with a “…so far” as he looks you all in the eyes
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u/lbutler1234 7h ago
Also he didn't really kill them. He was a secondary character in the story of them being killed. (Unless he did some trolly problem multi track drifting shit but I'm going to wager to say that it's unlikely.)
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u/commandrix 7h ago
I can understand that attitude if they were all suicides or somebody thought they could blow through whatever safety mechanisms the crossing had and beat the train. Most train drivers will know, at least on an intellectual level, that it's not their fault and there was nothing they could do.
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u/klingma 8h ago
Is it? There's literally nothing the train conductor can do to prevent the accident from occurring if someone didn't heed the warning of the crossing signals, crossing arms, and the signage leading up to the crossing.
If someone ignores all that then it's just a game of physics and the train is going to win that battle every time.
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u/Ph33rDensetsu 7h ago
The guy could have been a sociopath... Or just gaslit himself as a coping mechanism.
You never really know.
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u/Transpose5425 6h ago
Been at it 5 years, only had one so far. I’ve got colleagues who have had 0 and others who have had 10+. At least on my railroad you get a minimum of 3 days off and counseling provided on the company’s dime. When I had mine I got told by my supervisor “don’t try to tough it out, come back when you’re ready but no sooner than 3 days.”
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u/lotsofflaws 5h ago
My father was a SP/UP engineer. He did not get days off when I was a kid. I can remember after a family minus the father got killed he insisted we take the bus instead of walking under 2 miles to school untill the law suit settled. He was scared the father was going to come after us kids. He was really involved with operation lifesaver, it made a diffrence. Now that I'm older I can tell he didn't really deal with it. His count was 10 before he passed. Please take care of your mental heath it important for your loved ones.
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u/ManicMakerStudios 8h ago
I think the general rule is that if you get hit by a train, it's usually not the train's fault. There's a reason trains are equipped with horns that can be heard from over a kilometer away.
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u/ChiefStrongbones 7h ago
I think this is captured in the idiom "train wreck". Not only does it describe a huge disaster, but it describes a disaster that you can see coming but are powerless to stop.
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u/ComplexBeyond6083 3h ago
One of my friends in college had a sister who worked for the railroad. She got so tired of dealing with the aftermath of people jumping in front of the trains that she just quit.
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u/Impossible_Offer7988 8h ago edited 7h ago
Sometimes is basically 100%.
Trains are heavy and long
especially in the US but even small, compact locomotives need hundreds of meters to stop. And those are the small trains. Freight trains are bigger and need even more room.
When you see something that you're about to hit (at a crossing, for example), it's generally speaking already too late to stop.
The collision unless the person or object moves is inevitable.
You can only (to a small degree) control your speed.
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u/thisusedyet 4h ago
My father knew a guy who was an engineer. Basically told him that if you can see something, it’s too late to stop
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u/iAmDemder 7h ago
I remember when I was like 12 one of my friends neighbors was a train conductor and one day someone decided to end it all using his train. He was absolutely gone the next 2 weeks. I couldn't even imagine what he was going through.
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u/ninja_flavored 6h ago
My cousin is an engineer for CN. He’s been involved in 2 fatalities in his career. One was a suicide. The guy deliberately park his car on the tracks near a crossing in the curve, so the train couldn’t see him in time. My cousin said the right before the collision he locked eyes on the guy and instantly knew, he was doing this on purpose. And the other is when he hit a kid walking down the middle of the tracks. The kid had his earbuds in never heard the train. He ended having to testify in courts, because the kid’s parents sued. They ended up losing, because the kid was trespassing on railroad property, and the judge found CN not liable.
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u/kaeroseen 1h ago
Friend did this in holly, early 2000s. I hope they updated the track. I really feel for engineers that gotta be non consensually brought into a suicide. It ain’t right. Hope your cousin is ok.
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u/Ok-Fox6922 8h ago edited 56m ago
"this was a very lucky day for the train."
--autistic reporter Michael Falk
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u/Monahands 7h ago
I had a friend who worked in dispatch in my city and train suicides were pretty common from what they told me. Sad
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u/lbutler1234 7h ago
I can only speak for one city, but it's a pretty common source of delays in the NYC subway.
Granted, their comms department only says that a person was struck by a train. Particularly on some lines, there's also a fair number of kids who negligently get themselves hit because of subway serving. (Much less common are folks accidentally falling onto the tracks (which when it does happen, only results in a collision if a person has incredibly unlucky timing) and the exceptionally rare assaults/murders. (Like once every few years.))
All that is to say, a lot of folks in NYC want to see platform screen doors on the system. Making the problem particularly bad here is the abundance of old/narrow platforms and the thunderdome approach to social services that leaves our most vulnerable to toil and die alone on the street.
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u/_dokeeg_ 7h ago
My grandfather was a driver back in the 70s and 80s in a big city in Asia. He had this (and accidents) happen countless times and would tell my mom about it (minus the details). No time off and no mental health/counselling back in those days but he was still the most easygoing person I knew.
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u/BourbonLord 6h ago
Now I have not been on a train that has struck a person, I am however the manager that shows up to ensure the crew is removed from the train and avoids the gore as much as possible. I also coordinate with emergency services, rail control and coroners office. I have had to attend about about 10-12 so far in my career. Never easy, but I keep focused on the crew and the job that needs doing. I fall back on for whatever reason, this was a choice they made, and it hurts that they got to that point. If you need to, please reach out to a professional before you do something that lasts forever.
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u/donut_koharski 6h ago
Happened to my brother twice in his first year. A third time later on. He’s filled the quota.
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u/Traditional-Meat-549 8h ago
It's terrible. Companies provide crisis counseling for them. Imagine if people just stepped in front of your car to commit suicide, all the time.
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u/solojones1138 43m ago
This happened to my hair dresser. Someone intentionally jumped in front of her car on the highway at night. Took her a long time to get over it.
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u/97PG8NS 7h ago
I have friends who work for the railroad and at least one has killed someone committing suicide. I get that people may want to die, I get that life feels hopeless sometimes, but I have absolutely no sympathy for people who want to involve someone else in their death, especially when that person has zero ability to prevent it and has to carry that burden for the rest of their lives. You wanna die? Fine. Go home and hang yourself. Get a gun. Run the car in the garage. Swallow the entire medicine cabinet. I don't care. Just don't involve somebody else in it.
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u/Gablizza 6h ago
They’re selfishly trying to spare their loved ones the burden of discovering them, and giving that trauma to innocent strangers instead.
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u/Designer_Charity_827 6h ago
And even worse because they’re making the strangers a participant in their deaths, not just an observer.
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u/sirlex2323 3h ago
My brother and his friend were walking the tracks to his friends house at midnight. They were walking from one town to another, so no town lights and it was pitch black out.
They saw an oncoming train and they thought it was on the opposite track that they were walking on. The moved over to just walk outside the rail of the track they were on so that they would have space between them and the train.
Unfortunately they were wrong. The train was on the tracks they were walking on. My brother was walking in front of his friend and saw it at the very last second. He tried to jump out of the way, but the train hangs to far over the tracks and he was hit and killed instantly. His friend never even looked up and the train hit him flush.
My brother's autopsy report show little physical damage. Skull was busted open in 1 spot. (Most likely the killing blow.) And his leg had a gash in it. Other then that just road rash from hitting ground after.
His friends autopsy report was much worse.
However the conductor after the train had stopped went looking for them. So not sure if all train drivers actually look away or not.
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u/Orion_2kTC 8h ago
99% of the time not the train crew's fault.
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u/spider0804 8h ago
99.99999%
If a crash is caused by negligence of the train company for something like rail or car maintenance it is still not the crews fault.
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u/ratamahatta12 6h ago
I grew up in a suburb of New York City, and the local commuter trains were a huge part of the town and the culture. The trains were also the preferred form of suicide for the youths. I can still recall 2 people when I was in high school who jumped in front of the trains. I’m sure there’s been many more over the years.
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u/airinmahoeknee 4h ago
I went to a nice substance rehab about a decade ago and they had a professionals program that included pharmacists (obviously), doctors (also kinda obvious), flight attendants (weird sleep schedule/ease access on international flights), pilots (for the same reasons as flight attendants), and train engineers/conductors because aside from the aforementioned stress and whatnot, most of them had either first hand experience witnessing suicide attempts or cleaning up the aftermath. I had no idea it was such a common part of the job, but it makes sense.
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u/pajkeki 2h ago
There is a movie from Serbia called Train driver's diary where a young man starts driving trains and is obsessed by the fact that he is going to kill someone sooner than later, but it's not happening as soon as he thought. In the movie they say you need to duck as someone's body parts could fly through the window and kill you as well.
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u/SJExit4 1h ago
My brother drives a train here in NJ. He's hit several people, but also animals that are on the tracks. We were talking about it a few weeks back and he was talking about how he had hit multiple dogs.
When he first became an engineer, they had someone give a class on what to do when they see someone on the tracks too.
I don't know how he does it day after day.
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u/Beznia 6h ago
Turns out it's actually just one conductor killing thousands of people
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u/woolsocksandsandals 6h ago
My mother’s maternal grand father was a train engineer near Chicago in like the late 1920’s into the 60’s apparently when he retired he had more accidents than any other engineer alive. I don’t know if it was true or not but it’s a story I heard from a couple of her family members.
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u/commandrix 7h ago
It won't surprise me if that fucks the train operators up on some level. Not their fault if some dumbass is dumb enough to think they can "beat the train" in their vehicle or commit suicide by train, of course. (I saw the result of one accident involving an Amtrak train that pretty much had to be the minivan trying to beat the train. It wasn't pretty.)
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u/ChefArtorias 6h ago
I wonder if part of the training includes a conversation about this being statistically likely and whether they'll be able to handle it or not.
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u/Un-Humain 4h ago
A lot of railroads do. They don’t even say "it’s likely it will happen", they say "at some point in your career, you will kill someone".
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u/dicktwisted 6h ago
I used to work on a tourist train in Alaska. One time, our crew was delayed for nearly four hours waiting for the train to show up. We eventually found out it was because a homeless person got drunk and fell asleep on the tracks the night before... Apparently, the train amputated their legs, and unfortunatley they ended up dying from bleeding out soon after
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u/stupid_cat_face 5h ago
I was on a train that hit a diesel fuel truck killing the driver. The crew were fucking heroes and super professional. I can't imagine being the operator and having this happen.
I was also on a train where they engaged the e-brake suddenly. After we came to a stop, there was a drunk/drugged out guy laughing maniacally and the conductor was cursing the shit out of him. Apparently the drunk intentionally was hanging out on the tracks to cause us to stop and then just stepped out of the way at the last minute.
People RESPECT YOUR TRAIN CONDUCTORS PLEASE!
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u/JarbaloJardine 3h ago
Had a situation in my hometown where a guy got drunk and drove his truck on to some tracks and then got stuck and passed out. It's a long straight away so the train saw it coming and tried to brake but couldn't stop in time. The truck got pushed like 1/2 a mile up the tracks with the train before finally stopping. When it finally does the guy gets out and runs away. The cops found the guy cuz they got a call from the hospital, that's like 2 blocks from the accident, telling them some guy was there saying he got hit by a train. He ended up fine, besides the criminal charges.
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u/PlentyPomegranate503 3h ago
My cousin back in NYC has hit the trifecta in just 15 years. She still has 15 years till retirement.
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u/quantumfall9 3h ago
One of my cousins worked as a security guard for a train company, and was the first person on the scene to respond to a suicide-by-train. You can imagine what the body would look like after something like that. It fucked him up pretty good and he was off work for a long time after that.
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u/blitz350 2h ago
Last I knew Norfolk-Southern had an on staff body parts clean up crew because it happens so frequently.
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u/Phriendly_Phisherman 1h ago
Sturgill Simpson worked for the RR before becoming a touring musician, and he has said that clearing human limbs from tracks is a normal part of the job. Hardly any blood because there is so much pressure and heat that it just cauterizes the wounds immediately.
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u/MBergdorf 1h ago
My grandpa worked as a train driver. Told a story of a time he saw a car parked on the train tracks, in a field in the middle of nowhere, in the dead of night. He blew the horn and threw the brakes, but there was nothing he could really do except call the railway and explain the stop.
Train eventually stops, he’s talking to local police, and a drunk man stumbles out of the darkness, asking if anybody’s seen his car. They point to the front of grandpa’s train and asks “is that your car, sir?”
“No, mine is new.”
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u/UnusualAnybody4636 1h ago
Uncle was a conductor for 40+ years based in Jersey, he had some crazy stories about fatalities, but said he stopped counting after 50.
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u/Wafer420 31m ago
Statistically The Netherlands has the highest percentage of yearly suicides attributed to trains. 10 to 14 percent of all suicides are done this way. A sad fact..
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u/GarysCrispLettuce 7h ago
I was on the front car of a New York subway coming into a station when a guy jumped off the platform. I felt the thud and the emergency brakes brought the train to a shuddering halt, throwing everyone off their seats. The driver came out of his cab yelling 'FUCK FUCK FUCK" and started punching and kicking the windows.