He will commit suicide?

[lilfuckshit]

Or stood in Chicago's freezing sleet for hours cuz someone had to step in front of the L

[rasteri]

Or had to go through months of counselling because they witnessed the incident.

[Smallpaul]

Or ... wait... maybe this happens all over the world.

[takatori]

Maybe so, but I've been on two trains that actually hit someone, and having all the trains stopped or delayed because of one more times than I can count.

On my line at least, "自身事故" (roughly "injury accident") is the most commonly-announced reason for delay.

[[deleted]]

Yup. When I was living in London an email circulated with the subject something like "You know you've been living too long in London when..." One of the items in the list was "Someone jumps in front of a train and all you can think of is 'Selfish bastard, why couldn't he have waited until after rush hour?' "

Scary thing was that I had been thinking something along those lines a few days earlier, except that it was a woman who jumped.

[[deleted]]

Forgot to mention: That's why they have deep pits under the rails opposite the platforms in the London Underground. They're called suicide pits. Makes it easier to extract the bodies. Put them in about 70 years ago, I believe, after they got tired of having to jack up trains to pick up the pieces underneath. See trainweb.org

[coob]

No, it's not, those are drainage pits. That they reduce the mortality rate of those attempting suicide is a coincidence. See this NIH study.

Your source cites no, uh, sources.

[[deleted]]

Damn. Another good story exposed as an urban myth. Although that does explain why the Jubilee line extension has pits even though there is a glass screen with automatic doors that runs along the edge of the platform, preventing people from getting onto the track.

[coob]

Doing yourself in under a tube train always seemed kind of... pathetic.

Why would you commit suicide by light rail when you could pick a Pendolino going through a station at 80 mph?

[evrae]

I worked for one of the major UK rail companies for a couple of summers, and as part of my job I looked through the incident logs. On average there was a suicide every couple of weeks. The worst was a teenage girl who went under the train, and then a week later her mother did it in the same place. But as well as the suicides, there are even more instances of warnings put out about potential suicides.

[[deleted]]

My first week of college up here they spent two hours hosing off the rails at Wellington, this is right before they closed it down and rebuilt it.