It happened AGAIN... *****************

[dkwolf]

Little bit of a necro-bump, but this seemed fitting here. Watch all the way to the end.

 

[CreamyGoodness]

Ahh so THATS why my commute took so long yesterday.

http://gothamist.com/2013/06/11/n_q_trains_suspended_between_queens.php

So, turns out I get into Astoria just after the police scooped body parts of a suicidal man off the street. I'm actually a little shaken now, thinking of how many times I have walked on the sidewalk, and the idea that a random arm or leg would have fallen on me had I been on a walk on a Saturday.

 

[Homercidal]

You gotta let it go, man.

 

[CreamyGoodness]

Oh great... now people are starting to make "its raining men" jokes.

 

[worksnorth]

I just dont understand. Unless a train somehow jumps the tracks (which happens very very rarely. I dont know if it has ever even happened once with a NY subway train) there is absolutely no way a train can hit you unless YOU go to IT. It is literally more likely for a chunk of frozen urine to fall from an airplane and hit you than it is for you to get hit by a train... and yet we have had 200 people hit by trains this year!! WTF!?

Yes this^^
I also don't really understand how trains can collide,or hit each other at all? They are on tracks, they are on schedules. How could it be any more predictable? Yet you hear about it all the time.
I guess maybe if I came from a part of the country where trains were more prevalent this would make some since to me.

 

[aygov]

Yes this^^
I also don't really understand how trains can collide,or hit each other at all? They are on tracks, they are on schedules. How could it be any more predictable? Yet you hear about it all the time.
I guess maybe if I came from a part of the country where trains were more prevalent this would make some since to me.

True, they are on schedules and tracks, but people are operating them and most of the time you have more than one train operating on the same track. So if an engineer misses his stop signal you have one train driving into another train.

There is a big initiative to implement PTC (positive train control) which basically will auto-brake a train should an engineer start operating in a reckless manner, but it's still a ways out with all the infrastructure required for it.