Something that I realized is overlooked in this thread is the other-other victim: the Caltrain engineer.
Railroad crews that hit people and/or vehicles can get extremely bad PTSD and it can have a massive impact on them. My best wishes go to the crewmember who is likely dealing with a very trying time.
An ex of mine's uncle worked for 40 years as a track engineer for a railway company in Tokyo. There, the trains cannot be stopped for any longer than absolutely necessary, and the engineers were/are frequently called out to inspect and help clean up the track, with a claw-type pick-up tool and a bucket. Hit at 100kph and go under the wheels - it can be very messy. And I'm not talking once or twice here, it happened several times a year.
It's possibly even worse being the driver, but it always struck me what an utterly horrific job that must be and wondering what stress-related illnesses it would produce in the affected employees.
edit: I should clarify that any large body parts are collected by the police or medical personnel. The engineer's job is to certify the integrity of the track and clear it of foreign matter, washing it down too if necessary.
The uncle of my girlfriend is a train driver (not in Japan, but in Belgium), and he's had several of these incidents happen during his career. Here, walking under a train is one of the more popular methods of committing suicide.
It's a very tough situation, because trains don't stop on demand. Last week, a friend-of-a-friend killed himself by walking into a slow-driving train. Imagine being the driver of a train with a 20-year-old kid walking towards your cabin and being unable to stop the train in time.
I read somewhere once that the suggested procedure for train engineers who are about to hit somebody is to sound the horn and activate the brakes, then cover their ears, close their eyes, and scream so that they do not hear the noise.
I'm not sure if that is true, but it really ingrained in me a sense of how horrible it must be to be so powerless in that sort of situation.
Also overlooked is the guy we assume to have been trying to commit suicide. He is still a fellow human being, but what possible words do we have for him? Seemingly none on this thread.
Things might be bad for the Caltrain engineer, but he still has his job. However, for Mr Failed Suicide, he has the following to look forward to: the problems that existed before the attempt, those will not have gone away. The physical agony of injury due to being hit by a train. A hospital bill. The fact that he is not going to be Mr Popular for indirectly causing someone else to die. Hence, with hindsight, his original depression will look like happy times.
In London (and probably every major city) commuters are regularly affected by those trying to commit suicide by being hit by a train. Recently we had one woman on the tracks first thing in the morning. She did get hit, but not fatally. This required a suspension of service. Eventually the authorities caught her and, after being admitted to 'A+E' (Accident and Emergency), they took her to the mental health ward. After lunch she was able to discharge herself and make it down to the train station where she was able to do the deed just in time for rush hour.
Because the trains ended up out of sequence due to her morning capers and because the tracks had to be handed over to the police for them to do their work for afternoon/evening, it meant that she had managed to effectively close the track for the entire day. You can imagine how best pleased the tens of thousands of commuters on that line were.
I would not be the least bit surprised if the guy that tried to suicide himself in this story tries to kill himself as soon as he is able to, as per aforementioned London lady. There is a big difference between 'cry for help' suicide attempts and being on the tracks. There is also a difference between someone standing on a tall building preparing to jump and someone on the tracks. Effectively, with that train coming along it is equivalent to the jumper being in freefall, the point of no return has been passed. I don't think that our hero in this story had time to realise that.
Those Caltrain accidents seem to happen all the frigging time [1]. I'm not sure much can be done about them, but every time I hear about one my heart sinks a little lower.
Is there any obvious thing that I'm missing that could be done?
Most subway stations in Singapore have walls with doors between the train and the platform. The doors open only after the train arrived and stopped. (It's similar to elevator doors.)
Makes it impossible to fall or jump on the tracks.
Unlike that system, Caltrain runs at ground level for >100km through built-up areas, with many (hundreds of?) road crossings. It would be extremely expensive to make the tracks completely inaccessible to pedestrians.
I do think there's something wrong with our entire government-paid-infrastructure-system where we pay vastly more than we receive in value when any work is done.
If we got fair value for infrastructure projects, I'd like to see a huge amount more transportation, energy, etc. infrastructure in the US -- a lot of what we have is outdated or insufficient. I don't really care if it is government or private industry, but that it costs vastly more to get the same work done in the US than in other places contributes to substandard infrastructure.
- The train doors need to line up closely with the glass doors, for obvious reasons. Commuter trains in the US are not capable of stopping so precisely. Usually the trains would have to support some kind of computerized stop-assist in order to be precise enough to pull this off.
- Said stop-assist wouldn't just be a train feature, it would involve communication with the track, and therefore upgrades to the entire signaling system. Many systems have this "for free" by virtue of being built later. The actual track Caltrain runs on pre-dates Caltrain itself by a wide margin.
- You need to run a unified, homogeneous vehicle fleet so the doors are in the same places on all trains. This is the problem with safety doors in large legacy train systems (see: NYC, Chicago) where due to legacy factors there are many vastly different trains all running on the same track.
A lot of non-trivial problems where the only solution is vast capital spending.
For some greater detail: AAR regulations require that trains that run on lines which include freight traffic meet certain weight and crash standards. US freight cars have the highest standard axle loads in the world, so any train that runs where it can hit one must be able to withstand a head-on collision. The sole exception to the rule is when all freight traffic runs at a particular time when no passenger trains are running, with derails (a safeguard) in place to keep any freight from making it on to the tracks outside the window.
Caltrain runs on the old Southern Pacific line, which includes several on-line customers and a few branch lines. Due to the way the line is made, there is no way to have the required separation without significant upgrades.
Finally, stop-assist is now doable via GPS signals and other lineside equipment, removing the need for signalling upgrades. However, it also requires either lighter equipment or disc brakes on all cars along with equipment in the cab. Both are quite costly, and always require a homogenous fleet with the exact same door configuration.
TL;DR -- it doesn't have to be difficult or expensive.
It's not as hard as you make it out to be. I live in Japan where these (very effective) safety doors have been rolling out for more than a decade.
I don't think there is any need for computerized stop-assist. On at least some of the trains here, and I think most, it is up to the driver top stop the train. Once in a great while, they accidentally overshoot by a foot or two, apologize on the loudspeaker, and back the train up to align it properly.
There is not need for a homogeneous vehicle fleet, either. In fact, in Japan just about every line gets a unique train design (which does seem weirdly inefficient, but whatever). At first they we in fact designing different safety doors to match every train. But later, to cut costs and make it possible to have safety gates at stations featuring trains with different door configurations stop, they just designed wider safety gate that can open more on one side than the other.
This brings to mind another simple optimization -- if your trains really suck so much ass that the driver is unable to stop them with reasonable precision, just make the safety gates six feet (or ten feet, whatever) wider than the train doors. (Easier if you make them lift up to open rather than opening laterally.) There is no need for the safety doors to be the same width as the train doors.
They also don't have to be expensive and made of glass. A cheaper gate consisting of a few strong bars is nearly impossible for a human to accidentally fall through.
Finally, it doesn't have to be a track feature. Some of the ones here are essentially the same as an American style garage door opener. When the operator/conductor opens the train doors, he then opens the safety gates.
> It's not as hard as you make it out to be. I live in Japan where these (very effective) safety doors have been rolling out for more than a decade.
Japan has one of the largest passenger rail industries with massive capital investment. They are quite good at station design and engineering and I definitely applaud their use of enclosed platforms - which ironically came about more out of a desire to reduce wasted energy on air-conditioned subway stations ventilating into the tunnels.
> I don't think there is any need for computerized stop-assist. On at least some of the trains here, and I think most, it is up to the driver top stop the train. Once in a great while, they accidentally overshoot by a foot or two, apologize on the loudspeaker, and back the train up to align it properly.
Lighter trains can do so manually, but on the majority of lines in the JR network commuter trains and shinkansen have a computerized stop-assist that will get the train within a few inches of the desired point. Some lines do not use the computerized stop-assist (Yamanote, Chuo, etc.) as they are primarily above ground with longer platforms.
> There is not need for a homogeneous vehicle fleet, either. In fact, in Japan just about every line gets a unique train design (which does seem weirdly inefficient, but whatever). At first they we in fact designing different safety doors to match every train. But later, to cut costs and make it possible to have safety gates at stations featuring trains with different door configurations stop, they just designed wider safety gate that can open more on one side than the other.
In Japan, the majority of trains use very similar door configurations. They either have end-cap doors, or 2-4 doors with even distribution. Most commuter lines with the enclosed platforms employ a single type of rolling stock on a dedicated platform.
The Keisei railway and other private roads have platform gates, which are a bit different. Those are waist height and are simply to keep people from stepping to the edge when express trains pass. I think you are referring to these, and they are definitely useful, but see my final point as to why they aren't feasible for Caltrain.
> This brings to mind another simple optimization -- if your trains really suck so much ass that the driver is unable to stop them with reasonable precision, just make the safety gates six feet (or ten feet, whatever) wider than the train doors. (Easier if you make them lift up to open rather than opening laterally.) There is no need for the safety doors to be the same width as the train doors.
They don't suck ass, they are just quite heavy. A Caltrain rolling stock set is 160 tons for the locomotive and then 20 tons per car (est.) That is far, far heavier than any JR trainset in operation and much harder to stop. You don't get electro-pneumatic brakes to stop every car at exactly the same rate - instead you have dynamic brakes and air. Try to stop that with some precision :P
In the end, the main sticking point isn't the rolling stock anyway. The problem is that the platforms are open and anyone can walk on at anytime. There is no way in current Caltrain stations to restrict access with any degree of certainty. To change this would require grade separation and massive overhauls of each station at the very least.
Japanese trains exclusively use raised platforms and 99%+ of stations have restricted access (with only rural/flag stops being the exception). This makes it easy to use some sort of safety mechanism to restrict access to the tracks. Trains in the US are far different and don't really fit the same mold, unless you get to the Northeast and ride the NYC commuter trains (MTA, LIRR, ConnDot, etc.)
I have always felt enclosed platforms are necessary to move passenger rail forward in the US, but they are a long ways off - and likely will never happen regardless.
The same system is used in Hong Kong. Trains rock up to fully enclosed stations (even for above ground) behind a perspex barrier. Doors line up with the doors in the perspex and both open at the same time.
Are most of these cases suicides, or accidents of some kind? If they're accidents, it seems like a few cheap IR sensors deployed in the tunnels near each station could be used to trigger an emergency stop for any approaching trains.
If they're suicides then there's no point spending a lot of money trying to prevent them, at least not at such a late stage.
Emergency stops are a big deal for trains, especially loaded freight trains. False alarms (from animals, or people jaywalking across the tracks) would create a whole 'nother set of problems.
However I believe there is at least another solution doable for commuter trains in the us. It is not that hard and not that expensive to have a sliding panel who opens in front of the doors.
But what probably matters here is that cost of a dead human < cost of new system to protect human lives. So as long as this is the case they won't change it.
Caltrain trains has 2 types of cars, with doors at different locations, which makes this solution not trivial. I guess you could have 2 sets of doors, to open depending on the car model, but even that has the alignment problem.
Since there would normally be no one there except when a train is present, it should be easy for whoever monitors the security cameras to spot such people.
A large portion of Caltrain is at ground level with streets, such as at the station at Mountain View. You could easily walk around such barriers by walking on the road and into the wrong side...
Caltrain is a train, not a subway. I don't know the technical difference, but the trains are bigger and heavier, and the tracks are not elevated or really separated from their surrounding cities, and the "stations" are really "platforms." In other words, the suicide threat is along the entire length of the route, from SF to San Jose.
Sadly yes. The trains that caltrain has are not able to stop within the 12" requirement for automatic platform doors. In addition the platforms are 3-4x longer than in Singapore (I've been there).
Still a bit shorter than Caltrain platforms, but very close. Japan has very long enclosed platforms as well.
It isn't that you can't enclose a long platform - more that it is both costly and requires raised platforms with grade separation.
Caltrain stations are not designed to restrict platform access to ticketed passengers and anyone can just walk to the end of the platform and go around. Subways and many raised-platform stations on high-density lines are designed to restrict platform access in such a way that it is difficult to get around and hop on the tracks.
Of course, not much will stop a very determined person - it is more designed to stop accidents.
The walls without doors (open at the door area) might be simple. But walls with doors does not seem as simple.
If someone gets trapped between the doors, then the train should be disabled from moving. You see it most often - people dashing in at the last moment getting themselves or their backpack getting stuck. The station doors also have to synchronize with the train doors. Else say, the train door opens, you step out but the station door does not open. Now the train is ready to move...
Agreed. We have them in Paris at a minority of stations. Hopefully this will eventually be ubiquitous and not having them, like elevators with no internal doors, will seem extremely outdated.
(Yes, this must be costly, but it's not just relevant to prevent suicides. I have once been at the very brink of a subway platform in Paris without that did not have such equipment, along with a huge crowd of other people who were eager to get in the train. Anyone behind could just push anybody on the (electrified) tracks, and if panic were to break out for any reason it would have been a disaster.)
Are Singapore trains indoor and/or on highway bridge? Most caltrains stations are open platform. Not sure if you have ever been on a caltrain, it runs between suburban area so anyone can just lay herself on the track at any point.
However, there are some above ground sections, and I think the stations there don't have walls. It's been ten years since I've been there, so things might have changed...
For every station platform, there's half a dozen pedestrian-accessible grade crossings. There's nothing you could really do without rebuilding the whole thing.
Common sense 101 teaches that this can only be true after some point.
In the case of this particular "101", that point is not yet met. However, when the cost of 6.4 miles of single-lane is $72 million, it does get a bit pricey. [1]
They are planning to add another TOLL/HOV lane for most of the corridor, and open up the existing HOV to TOLL. You might get to drive it in 2018! But I don't see cost estimates for that one yet. [2]
Curious, is the opposite true? Maybe we should drop the 101 down to one lane, and the speed limit to 25 for good measure? Then there would be practically no traffic at all, as everyone would avoid it like the plague. Problem solved!
...or, you know, we could just fix the underlying social injustices that cause so many people to seek to end their lives that it causes friggin delays in my busy little life. Those jerks.
I'm sympathetic to the issue of social equality, but depression resulting in suicide is not a rational process. Addressing class issues will not eradicate this problem. The wealthy become depressed and suicidal too, for example: http://www.ibtimes.com/eric-salvatierra-killed-caltrain-payp...
Yeah, but that just means that those with mental illness -- hi, btw -- probably require more treatment than they've been getting.
A story. Up here in Vancouver, the police recently released a study showing that the thing we did in the nineties -- ending welfare and closing institutions for the severely mentally ill -- actually cost us vastly more, because the police ended up doubling as nurses/counsellors/social workers, and the additional training cost vastly more than the original division of labour.
What is the annual cost of leaving the hurt hanging?
You don't find it fascinating, you're just being an asshole. You took a general problem and made it about yourself - because for whatever reason you've decided your interpretation of the problem rules above all else, and everyone else is blind uncaring sheeple for thinking otherwise. And now you're playing armchair psychiatrist for everyone who disagreed.
By the way, I think Larry is a genius and a comedian in your situation because what the fuck else can you say to a blanket statement like "People keep killing themselves"?
Is pointing out an ethical blind spot really 'being an asshole'? And yes, I'm playing armchair psychiatrist, because the only alternative is to think less of people. I'd rather understand them than judge. And you?
HN will mature as a platform for discourse when it becomes less of a concentrator of one particular worldview and more of a reactor of many.
Oh, and also? The black humour was intentional. It is charming that you took it to be your discovery, but I will leave the obvious speculations on the table. While furiously glancing at them.
The downvotes are for your assumption that (1) people don't care about addressing underlying causes of suicide, and (2) people only want to fix the problem because it is inconvenient to them, and not for the sake of the people killing themselves.
It seems that you have extrapolated both these things from the fact that someone has proposed a technical solution to suicide, which is completely illogical. There is strong evidence that removing popular, easy methods of suicide actually reduce suicide rates.
No, my response is on evaluating the character of people that immediately leap to a technical solution without asking (a) who the solution benefits (apart from some a dodgy mention of an absent, undocumented statistic)
(b) whether there is a technical approach to the problem that might be a bit less Soviet than putting up a wall to keep the jumpers in. For example, better funding for health care.
Most Caltrain deaths are suicides, and its hard to stop people who stand on a platform, waiting for a Baby Bullet to pass through. That's the reality of having stations skipped.
And it's not just at stations. Four high school students committed suicide at the same crossing in Palo Alto in 2009, so a security guard was hired to patrol it [1]. There is still a guard there today.
Caltrain tracks go through high stress areas in the Bay Area where more people are prone to suicide. It's a readily available mean nearby to get it done quickly. I've known a friend of a friend done it after years of depression. A number of students in Palo Alto high school have done it on the track. Palo Alto high school is very competitive and students are under enormous pressure from parents to do well.
I notice in the BART stations, there's sort of a lip on the platform edge that (if you have time) you can tuck yourself into so you avoid being hit. Do the Caltrain stations not have this? Of course, it assumes that the chap who was on the tracks initially, was there by accident.
Not to be harsh, but in my first responder as well as my first aid training the first thing is "check for your own safety". If unsafe, then be as selfish as you can. If I was in a helpless situation, I hope I don't still try and help with the result that both don't survive.
e.g. fire and person inside some room is really far away, lots of smoke, cannot see, heat, etc? Close the door, you cannot help and you'll very likely die.
As said: This is taught during first aid and first responder courses.
Very difficult situation. Very hard to risk your life to save another. But how do you live your life knowing that you could have saved another life but you were not brave enough. Scares me just to think about being in that predicament.
I don't know if he had kids or not ... but I have four and still would rather that they considered their father a hero than "that guy who wouldn't do anything". I have good life insurance because there are plenty of instant ways to go.
I think that it’s important to try to help other people, but your safety is also important. For example it’s common that to rescue one person is drowning, more than one person attempts a rescue and all of then get drowned. You must learn how to proceed in those cases to be helpfull.
A few years ago I did a first aid mini-course. It was mostly about CPR and how to act in case of fire and chemical splits. The guide emphasized that the security of the rescuers is important. For example that before entering a door, you must check that the door will not close and trap you inside the dangerous place. Or make sure that the place you enter don’t have toxic fumes.
I agree that you need to be trained ... classes that teach life-guarding skills are essential around water, basic and advanced first aid, mountaineering, wilderness survival. You also need to be physically fit enough to do what you're contemplating (and more importantly ... know your own limits). I'm not going into details (it's not the point of my original comment) but learning these skills has been worthwhile.
Good lord. There's a huge range of options in between dead hero and "that guy who wouldn't do anything". You might, for example, bail out at some point after trying to help, and you should be allowed to make that decision without being equated to an idle bystander in any way.
You'd have them think that a stranger was more important to you than them? I don't think I'd ever give up my own life for a stranger's. Even the thought of my six-year-old son trying to cope with that news is pretty unbearable.
With the greatest respect and sympathy for a guy who had to make a snap judgment in the moment, I have to question that judgment. He inflicted a terrible loss on his own wife and family -- and to what end?
Decisions that people make in the "rescuing someone from the tracks in front of a fast approaching train" scenario cannot, in my humble opinion, be productively analyzed in the context of our ordinary lives. The situation is simply too extraordinary, and I'm not even sure "judgment" in the normal sense is a term that can be usefully applied to many folks in this situation.
Take all of your fears, drives, and insecurities, add your unreliable risk-assessing abilities (common to most humans) and an amount of adrenaline that many of us will never experience, and cram them into the space of seconds in the face of certain death, in front of an audience. I simply don't see the use of second-guessing a decision made under those circumstances.
For example, it could well be that someone "freezes" in motion, unable to discontinue the effort, compelled by adrenaline and emotion and whatever else. I've experienced this myself in far less serious situations.
Or it could be Mr. Scholz was in complete control of his faculties, and made a ordered, rational decision to keep up the effort at all costs. We'll never know.
It's fun to think about what I might do, but I have no way to relate to the actions of someone else. It's just too complicated.
> Take all of your fears, drives, and insecurities, add your unreliable risk-assessing abilities (common to most humans) and an amount of adrenaline that many of us will never experience, and cram them into the space of seconds in the face of certain death, in front of an audience. I simply don't see the use of second-guessing a decision made under those circumstances.
That's why you have to try to war-game these things in advance -- because in the heat of the moment you won't have time or capability to analyze them rationally. (It's the same reason why athletes and soldiers and sailors train incessantly, so that they can rely largely on trained pattern recognition, a.k.a. reflex.)
----
> It's fun to think about what I might do, but I have no way to relate to the actions of someone else. It's just too complicated.
People make mistakes, and "in the heat of the moment" is exactly the time when people don't have time to rather all the facts and rationally evaluate them for likely outcomes.
I've accepted what I thought at the time was a relatively low risk to myself to extricate someone, and it later turned out to have been vastly more dangerous than I'd thought originally. I made a quick assessment of the risks and my capabilities, was wrong, and got lucky. (I generally weight my own survival disproportionately highly vs. that of others, too, so I don't think I'm really reckless.)
I judge people much more harshly for situations where they have a long time to reflect and choose not to.
In this case, he probably either thought the train was slowing/stopping, and thus he'd have more time, or that he could extricate the person more quickly than he did. It might be the case that what he did had a high expected chance of success and he was just unlucky, or he had wrong information in the instants before, or overestimated his abilities, or underestimated the difficulty, or just had bad judgement; we probably won't know.
You believe you're hiding behind some kind of moral high-ground by making reference to his wife and family, all while criticizing a man who gave his life for a stranger. What a sickening sentiment you've seen fit to express publicly. A society based on your moral code would be no better than anarchy. If someone sticks out their neck someday for you, risking it all, will you perhaps be capable of a humanist thought then?
The first thing they teach you about rescuing drowning people is to make sure you don't drown too.
How is this any different?
It's entirely possible that he made an error in judgment, and made the whole situation worse because there are two people wounded (well, one dead, one wounded), while despite any attempt he made, there would have been at least one.
I wouldn't want someone to try to save me if I were going to die either way, and they were going to die if they tried.
> It's entirely possible that he made an error in judgement
And it's entirely possible that his decision was reasonable. Currently the facts presented are wholly insufficient to draw either conclusion. So one must ask why the presumption is that the judgement was obviously flawed, and what one's motivation is for commenting on such an unclear matter in such a way that effectively implies that the deceased is an idiot.
I think people subconsciously fill in details. These stories lack so much information that it's nearly impossible to conclude anything from them. But we see more than is there, filling it the holes with guesses and imagination.
One aspect of this is that people vastly overestimate how foreseeable an outcome is. If B occurs as a result of A, we tend to assume that B was an entirely foreseeable consequence of A, and that the person who did A either knew this or was an idiot for not knowing it.
The first thing they teach you about rescuing drowning people is to make sure you don't drown too.
Key difference is that this probably wasn't something he was _taught_. He was acting purely in the moment.
I think was you take that first step you tend to throw out risk assessment. Once you've looked someone in the eye, made whatever thread of personal connection, to then walk away and choose to let them die is possibly worse than death to some.
My point was that the person I was responding to is wrong: that not everyone would want a stranger to try and help them in every situation, and that sometimes not helping a stranger in mortal danger really is the ethical choice.
I'm aware that we don't know nearly enough details here to judge what he should have done; I was responding to the emotive response that we should laud every attempt to help someone in danger.
You're going through quite a contorted thought process to somehow find fault in an act of selflessness. I have no idea what your motivation to defy logic would be, but I'll try to respond anyway:
> not everyone would want a stranger to try and help them in every situation
This isn't relevant to the ethics of the situation. When the desires of the man on the tracks can't be ascertained, his life should by default be considered worth saving, as a fellow human being.
> sometimes not helping a stranger in mortal danger really is the ethical choice.
I have no idea what the "sometimes" are to which you're referring. Barstool philosophers are prone to saying that "sometimes things are other things," which is awfully hard to refute since probability of all events is finite in some universe.
I don't think you're actually reading what I'm writing.
I don't think it was a selfish action, and I do think the guy on the track was worth saving. But all the same, what we do know is that two people died because one person tried to save him, when doing nothing would've only had one die.
We don't have enough information to know if it was reasonable to try and save him or not, or the ability of the guy to know those facts at the time - the information is too sparse.
I was just pointing out that it's quite possible that it was inevitable that the guy on the tracks was going to die, and the guy trying to save him simply made it worse.
There are also numerous stories of drowning victims drowning their would-be saviors.
I don't think any and every attempt to save someone should be lauded as something good, and think those times we can ascertain that there's a good chance both people will die (versus the chance both will live), we should simply leave the victim to die, painful as it is to sit there impotently watching it happen.
Doing otherwise gives is a net negative expectation of the number of people alive, and I can't say that's an ethical choice.
I think people (including you) are very emotional about these kinds of situations, and aren't approaching them from a "try to maximize the number of people who live" perspective.
> You believe you're hiding behind some kind of moral high-ground by making reference to his wife and family, all while criticizing a man who gave his life for a stranger.
It's a question of which duty takes priority. I like to think that I'd take some risks to save someone else. I've never had occasion to put it to the test, but it certainly was pounded into me in the military in my younger days.
In civilian life, I'm not going to knowingly put myself anywhere near grave danger on behalf of an adult stranger (the calculus might be different for a child). Granted, there's always the possibility of misjudgment in the heat of the moment, as other commenters have pointed out. Even so, I'm going to err on the side of caution -- because as between an adult stranger and my family, there's absolutely no question in my mind where my higher duty lies.
How is it a sickening sentiment to consider the overall consequences of throwing one's self in front of a train to save a stranger?
If my wife were in the same situation, I sure hope she'd consider the effect on me and our children if she were hit by a train before entering such a dangerous situation without any understanding of the overall circumstance
Everybody can't and shouldn't always be a superhero.
There is nothing sickening about it. It was a bad judgment call considering the grave risks involved. Extrapolating the parent commenter's moral code to deduce that he/she is apathetic is wrong - the parent commenter might still care about society up till a certain risk level (which could be inflicted on him). And beyond that he/she may not. I don't see anything wrong with that.
Given the lack of details presented in the article the GP linked to, and the many scenarios I can think of which on the surface would have appeared "risky but not Darwin Award risky", I must conclude that either GP is psychic or is feeling insecure about knowing he'd never make the same decision in the presumed scenario that so many here are respecting, and is attempting to protect his self-esteem by asserting his perspective is the only rational perspective.
I upvoted you. I completely respect what this guy did, and honestly, hope I'd do the same, but I don't think we should ever avoid rational discussion about whether or not something really is the best thing to do, or just what feels like the right thing to do.
Of course, I don't think anyone here, parent included, would be so tactless as to bring this up with anyone closely connected to the situation during their time of loss, but I don't think it's good to shy away from asking difficult moral questions.
There is also a difference between doing nothing and doing things in a way which might be less effective than maximum effort but which would be safer for yourself.
e.g. if I'm alone and unarmed, and I see someone stopped involuntarily by the side of the road and relatively safe, in a bad area, in a normal-to-sketchy car, etc., I will probably call the police to report it, rather than stopping myself. If I see an elderly person in a rich area in a non-threatening car with a flat tire, I'll possibly stop and offer to help, or at least put better flares or whatever behind his car and make sure he's ok for water/health while waiting. If I see an actual accident in realtime, or the aftermath of an obvious accident, with likely trauma to passengers, I'll almost always stop (unless police/paramedics are already there).
Similarly, if someone was standing on the tracks with an approaching train, I'd verbally command him how to GTFO, and possibly belt/bag-as-rope, but particularly if it were an adult stranger who is potentially suicidal or otherwise unlikely to cooperate, I'd be instinctively reluctant to get in front of the train myself. Someone who accidentally fell would scare me less, but would also be more likely to be able to get out on his own or with assistance from the platform.
But the time to make all these decisions is well in advance of the incident; what level of comfort you have with different kinds of threats, skills in dealing with things, etc. I'd probably be more comfortable with water rescues (since I actually trained for this as a dive master) than most people, but less comfortable dealing with crazy/mentally unstable people, and more comfortable with end-a-hostile-threat vs. prevent-self-harm.
I find your comment fascinating purely because it's a concept that I've never been able to understand. While I can begin to understand what you're saying about the loss he inflicted on his wife and family, the life he could have saved far outweighs that loss; as I said, I couldn't live my life any other way. I often try to wrap my head around the concept of putting myself and my family before my fellow man, but it's one that just doesn't come to me easily.
For simplicity, let’s assume that you value all human equally. Then the question if not if he could have saved a life. The question is if (under similar circumstances) the probability of dying was less than the probability of saving the other person. I think it’s not reasonable to attempt a rescue with a 90% dying chance, knowing that there is only a 10% chance of success. On the other hand I think it’s reasonable to attempt a rescue with a 10% dying chance, knowing that there is a 90% chance of success. It’s very difficult to estimate the chances in this case, because we don’t know all the circumstances, the available information and the point of view. And it’s impossible to be sure how I would have reacted in the very short time that was available.
And if you want a more complex model and don’t mind using made up numbers, I’d prefer to weight myself and my family members with 2 points, and give my daughter at least 5 points.
The life of the survivor is more important than his? How can you make that kind of judgment? A person responsible for providing for a family has just as much social value as an arbitrary man hanging out on some railroad tracks.
To mindlessly kill yourself for any person is pointless, especially if that person is already suicidal. The burden of knowing someone died to save you is not something depressed people cope with well.
The man he tried to rescue had a family too. Sometimes you double down when you think the odds are in your favor. It's sad that turned out not to be the case this time.
You're getting downvoted, but I agree that we shouldn't be praising this kind of behavior out of context. The guy was unquestionably brave, had good intentions, but probably terrible judgement.
I hope if I'm ever in trouble that you're not around. Because if you are, I'm as good as dead while you think about what the best judgement call is.
This man acted bravely by trying to save this stranger, this fellow human being. Since no one else stepped up to help (or did I miss the part in the article where it talked about everyone trying to lend a helping hand?) he took it upon himself to do the decent HUMAN thing and try to help.
It's easy to criticize and pick apart this man's actions and judgement from behind your keyboard and after the fact. This man did a brave thing that had bad consequences. Yes it's a sad loss for this family, but this man is a hero in my book. He died trying to help people, regardless of whether he knew them or not.
> Yes it's a sad loss for this family, but this man is a hero in my book.
Out of curiosity, are you married? Do you have kids, or aging parents, or anyone else to whom you feel any sense of long-term duty? I'm not trying to be snarky, just to assess where you're coming from.
I don't think it's possible to evaluate the mindset of the individual attempting the rescue from the side line. All rational thought may have fled his mind and he was acting on pure impulse.
The only reason I speculate that might be the case was when I was held at gunpoint (long story), my mind immediately switched to a "detached observer" point of view. No fear or heroism, just observation of events.
> Have you thought about that person's life? about his family?
Yes I have -- and I've decided that for purposes of governing my conduct, in nearly all circumstances, my duty to my own family unquestionably takes priority over my duty to an adult stranger's family.
EDIT: And so there's no confusion, I would expect the same if the roles were reversed -- if I were trapped on a railroad track with a train bearing down on me, I'd be really pissed if some other dad (or mom) were to put his own life at grave risk to try to save mine. Just because circumstances are about to inflict a loss on my family doesn't justify his risking the same for his.
No one has compared "man-on-the-tracks" to confined space rescue yet. Before you attempt it you must protect yourself or you risk creating more victims or fatalities.
Chemists know all about it because of the risk of poisonous gas. If I saw someone collapsed in front of their fume hood not knowing what was going on I wouldn't even try to pull the fellow out without breathing gear, even if it was a friend or colleague. This is left to trained personnel, that is the fire brigade.
There was this incident about twenty years ago at my old university where they dispensed liquid nitrogen in a basement that had no oxygen sensor (!). The ventilation had failed, and a student who came to fill up his dewar fell unconcious for lack of oxygen and couldn't turn off the tap. A second student tried to pull him out and became unconscious as well. It took number three to pull out numbers 1 and 2. Result: one dead, one disabled.
There is bravery, and there is insane heroics. Pulling a fellow bent on suicide off a train track is the second kind. It takes discipline not to do it.
Terrible tragedy for this man's family and friends.
I wonder if I ever find myself on the platform hearing screams for help coming from down in the tracks... is it reasonable advice to just scream back at the person to lie down between the tracks -- what's the clearance?
Apparently sometimes enough, but not always, says Gawker/Reddit. [1] The 'best advice' is run like hell to the far end of the platform, and there should be a ladder there.
With Caltrain, you just step off the other side of the tracks so you're standing between the two sets of tracks. The only reason people are killed is either because they intended to be killed or because they are incapacitated.
Railroad crews that hit people and/or vehicles can get extremely bad PTSD and it can have a massive impact on them. My best wishes go to the crewmember who is likely dealing with a very trying time.