It does happen, you know
posted June 12, 2008
It does happen, you know. This is JR Kyoto station. Sometimes drivers try to beat the train at the grade crossing; sometimes, electronic signaling systems go haywire and need to be reset. Sometimes, peope decide that the way to kill themselves is to jump in front of a train and try to force other people to feel as bad as they do.
…and it happened to me last Sunday. While coming back from a nice dinner in Kobe, someone jumped in front of the train that we’d just missed. We sat in Shin Osaka until 2 am, looking at the ineffective metal fences erected to prevent such things, funded by money that would probably be better spent looking into why these things keep happening.
In sharing this act, I felt a mixture of pity for the (presumable) guy, and anger at a society that conspires in sending someone off the edge of a platform.
Heh. I was there when it happened. I think in this particular case the train hit a motorcycle (!) trying to beat the crossing gates, somewhere near Shin-Osaka.
We were waiting at “Track O” for a train back to Tsuruga. There was a ton of people waiting in the “non-reserved, non-smoking” line for the Toyama bound train, which was 40 minutes late. They all piled onto the train when it finally arrived – standing room only – yet, minutes later, the next northbound train arrived (going only as far as Kanazawa, I think), and the non-reserved cars were full of empty seats, which is kind of unusual for a northbound express train leaving from Kyoto Station on a Sunday afternoon.
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