New York Post piles on the horror with front-page photo of man about to be killed by subway train

Yahoo ^ | 12.4

[Alberta's Child]

Actually, I think many of the stations in the Tokyo subway system are built that way -- and that's one of the most civilized places on the planet.

It's not a safety feature designed to deal with loony-tunes who might shove people on the tracks. It's intended to deal with accidental mishaps under very large, surging crowds.

Of course, in Japan you probably don't have to worry about surging crowds or anything like that. Just check out how orderly these people are while their fellow subway riders are crammed into the train in front of them:

These people are probably following a posted rule that says they aren't supposed to cross the white line on the platform until the next train arrives in the station. Imagine that ... following rules.

[GeronL]

civilized?

kiddie porn possession is legal in Tokyo

U-15 (Under-15) perv shops litter the place

girls can sell dirty used underwear

underage prostitution is considered a good way to earn “pocket money” by minors

Half their anime (TV cartoons) usually has at least one story line glorifying sex among/with minors

What is their age of consent these days... 10? 12? not that it’s enforced.

CIVILIZED??

There is no honor there.

[Alberta's Child]

Well, OK -- maybe not.

But I can guarantee you that anyone with an IQ above room temperature would feel safer in Tokyo than in any city in the U.S.

[GeronL]

Oh sure, they won’t steal your bicycle

and if they did their wife and family will turn him in and come to you on their knees and hand you a wad of cash in apology.

Just keep a tight watch on your daughter while your there

[Arthurio]

Fear will often freeze people. Also, he was 58, and it would take quite a bit of upper arm strength to pull yourself out, assuming there were no grippy surfaces for the hands or feet.

[wideawake]

Unquestioning observance of prescribed rules is not synonymous with civilization.

The history of the 20th century should have put paid to argument before you wrote it.

[wideawake]

Unquestioning observance of prescribed rules is not synonymous with civilization.

The history of the 20th century should have put paid to that argument before you wrote it.

[Gene Eric]

Strange there are no others in the camera shot on the platform.

Too bad the guy didn’t lay down between the rails, or stand under the arches. Maybe he just stood up at the time of the photo getting his orientation. Train looks like it’s about 1/4-1/2 of a second away from him.

[Gene Eric]

See #58.

It’s easy enough to avoid getting hit if one is not paralyzed in fear and has at least a couple of seconds to move.

[Fightin Whitey]

Yes I’m sure you are right. I hadn’t noticed his age—in the photo I took him for a younger man.

I was thinking that with the adrenaline burst a guy could almost high-jump out of the trackbed. But I would agree with you that the surprise of being down there (especially since he was pushed) and the shock of the train bearing down might have frozen him in place.

[dennisw]

Since you asked.....there is a crawl space under the ledge his hands are grappling onto. He panicked. But if he had not he could have crouched in the crawl space and missed the train by inches

[Polynikes]

It is possible to survive an encounter with a subway train. There is a drainage ditch between the tracks. The fit will be tight and requires nerves of steel or just being unconscious but it can be done.
http://gothamist.com/2011/08/03/mans_life_saved_by_falling_onto_sub.php

Here is a subway worker taking refuge in a wall alcove, apparently surviving a train passing him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si-3yzODTv8

The fact that the victim was drinking probably didn't help matters. I have read that a suspect is being interviewed after being ID’ed by ex co-workers.

[livius]

I grew up there and traveled on the subway regularly until I got married, moved away for a few years...and then came back during the darkest period (in the 80s). That was when the incident I mentioned occurred.

The subway can be pretty horrible, but it’s a fast, efficient form of travel through a densely populated space. The only thing that I wish is that NYC as a whole would deal with the many stark raving mad “street people” who are allowed to live, not only in the streets, but in the subways and parks and any public space. They should all be institutionalized, which is what used to happen to them when I was a kid.

[livius]

There are fully staffed mental hospitals all over the state...totally empty. They’re kept staffed because of a combination of unions and the political need to provide jobs for those rural areas.

However, they’re empty because nobody can be sent there now.

I worked for a Catholic volunteer organization in the late 60s, and we would normally pick people up from the Bowery and, if we couldn’t deal with them because they were not just alcoholics but were mentally ill, we’d have them committed. They lived in cottages, were well-treated, medicated, and we visited them regularly. Then they’d be released into our custody until they either recovered enough to resume their lives or had to be committed again. At a certain point, this could go into long-term committment.

And then we had the passage of the law relating to “community mental health care,” sponsored by the ACLU, which seemed to believe that the mentally ill were just expressing themselves in a slightly unusual way.

This destroyed the mental hospitals and their programs. The last time I remember visiting one of our residents who had gone off the deep end (and who in the past had been committed to a lovely little 6-person cabin with great, dedicated nurses), the state had shut down his program and he was living in an 8-bed (four bunkbed) “independent living unit” in the unheated garage of a local person.

Of course, only a year or two later, the state stopped paying anything and these folks all hit the street. And for anybody who thought this might have been a cost saving, the cost was enormous in terms of everything from increased emergency room visits and hospitalization, sanitation services for the subway stations turned into latrines, confinement and legal costs for them after their arrests...and the biggest cost of all, medical expenses and lost income for their victims and the families of these victims. Nobody ever considers the negative economic impact of the roaming mentally ill on their surrounding society.

[xrmusn]

it was the microphones’ fault.
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Thanks, I ‘neglected’ one of the better examples....