Gov't wants to legislate for stupidity again
 

Now, I'm not saying that a one-foot gap is safe. No, of course not. They should obviously fix that, and it shouldn't take them a huge study to do that. HOWEVER, this is a Darwin Award candidate. Yes, it's a tragedy that she died, and so young. Doesn't mean she's not stupid.

What do you think? Is there liability on the state's part for unsafe conditions? Am I an insensitive jerk? Discuss.

Metro Article from AP

Handrails and ramps. There, now pay me for the study.

How does it take 6 months to study something like this? Why do we spend so frivelously on things like this, but we can't afford textbooks that are younger than 20 years old?

Well, god knows I've been clumsier than that, and fortunately have not had nearly as serious consequenses (would make it difficult to post this, heh). I certainly hope that slipping or falling or misstepping doesn't automatically mean one is stupid, or deservng of "withdrawl" from the gene pool.

'Cause then I'd fall into that one, too, I guess.

Overall, I concur with willravel's assessment. Now pay the man. :D

Sad. But I'm thinking rather than her just being a below marginal human, maybe she was having a bad day and was not focused at the moment. I think it does take a lapse of normal consciousness to fall like that, but on the other hand, I recall quite a few times over the years noticing how large that gap between train and platform could be and then being extra cautious, I sort of even recall very slight "vertigo" looking down into that hole as the train was pulling into the station ...and I'm not even a vertigo type of guy, I climb up anything available and will go out on the roofs of any building even thru doors that have to be "persuaded" to cooperate.

Does my spin on it suggest that there is liability for this, I don't know since that's splitting the legal hairs finer than I can do. I'll ask my buddy who works for Metro North what they think.

All tourists just need to wear bigger shoes. Bigger shoes means they won't slip into holes.

Problem solved.

Of course, we know the real solution is to abolish all train travel completely. More private cars!

If there's a gap large enough for somebody to fall thru, it should be fixed. As far as the state having any liability, probably not, since people should watch where they are walking, especially in unfamiliar places.

When I was in London subways, there were constant reminders over the PA to 'mind the gap'. Maybe that's what's needed here.

How do you fall through a one-foot-deep gap? That's one skinny person.

How about making all cars unable to go faster than 25mph? That would cut down on accident fatalities.

And stairs? Forget about it! They're so jagged and their corners are so harsh! Padding for the lot of them! And no flights higher than 3 steps!

Gotta say I'm with JustJess on this one. I've been falling down drunk and still managed to navigate the gap on train platforms. What a waste of money.

I'm not seeing how this is even possible. The gap I can see--I think I could probably fit through a one foot gap. What I don't understand is how she gets hit by a train going the other way. Was there a train going the ohter direction between the train and the platform?

I can also see someone just having a bad day, or walking and talking, or just clumsy falling into a gap that size. I don't think it's necessarily stupidity.

Gilda

I'm thinking along the same lines as Gilda. Anyone can have a bad day and take a mis-step.

A death is a valid reason to investigate train lines and look into streamlining our system.

Padding! Do you really think thats enough? All stairs should immediately be removed and replaced with safety ramps! :D

Accidents are mostly caused by human error and human activity can never be legislated into being idiot proof. This only leads to people who stop thinking for themselves, which in turn causes more accidents.

No regulation can cover every possible eventuality.

Why is trying to make sure a horrible accident doesn't happen again a bad idea? Nobody is 100% aware of their surroundings 100% of the time. All it takes is a bit of bad luck at one of those times.

I have no problem making things safer, but a 6 month study is a drain on funds better spent elsewhere. It takes me all of a few seconds to say, "Some people are clumsy, and therefore we should have ramps and handrails." That didn';t take 6 months.

No bull. After 6 months people forget, and the Govt can get back on to doing nada.

Not being a train rider, I have trouble visualizing this "gap" that is somehow positioned above speeding trains. But, guide rails do sound like they may help. I absolutely agree that a six month study is far stupider than the actual accident was. That's going to be a very expensive rail.

For all the naysayers, I have a question - at what point does spending the money to find a workable solution become attractive? Is it a question of money? Is there a dollar amount you have in mind? A range?

Personally, I'm all for safer products and safer conditions, and I can point to a lot of things that have been knowingly left unresolved because folks just aren't willing to spend the money at the time. Then the lawsuit hits because someone was legitimately hurt.

As far as the OP goes, I don't think that the dead girl was necessarily stupid or a "Darwin Award Winner". It could have been wet and she slipped or she may have been reading while getting on the train. Both have happened to me in Chicago, but our gaps are much narrower.

This is the reason that folks that own large parking lots watch for potholes. They are trip hazards and having a dangerous condition on your property where you've invited the public opens you up to litigation.

Also expressed as "No matter how much you idiot-proof something, an ingenious idiot can always get around it."

I've ridden Metro North hundreds of times, and as clumsy and careless as I am (I once ran over my own foot while driving a car,) I never had a problem wtih the gap. There are big yellow decals that say "WATCH THE GAP" on the doors, and the edge of each platform is painted bright yellow to draw your attention downward. I've also never seen a gap wider than 6 or 8 inches.

I used to get off at the stop where she fell through.. it has wider than normal gaps, but I never fell myself because I always was afraid to fall through.

While I'm most often a fan of Darwin and his work. I'm not sure this is all to his credit. A one foot gap is quite the hop for some I suppose.

And this comprehensive study that is expected to take more than six months... I bet dollars to doughnuts it isn't going to be worth a fart in a whirlwind.

follow up LINK

Ahhh...much more to the story than was first reported.

Man, she must have been tiny.

But that's what caused her death. Yes, she fell down under the train. If she'd stayed where she was, and not gone crawling around ON THE TRACKS, she'd most certainly have been fine. The gap where she fell had a STOPPED train on its tracks, and wasn't going to be moving immediately. They told her not to let go, but she crawled across a track, she got hit and died. Yes, it sucks, but she was drunk and didn't listen, and it cost her her life- that is not the fault of the railroad company.

Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) is a percentage-based number, and would not be affected if the patient LOST blood. If the patient had been GIVEN blood, that would only make the BAC lower, not higher... and 0.23% BAC is very high by itself... consider that a lot of states deem 0.08% "impaired" for the purposes of designating "driving under the influence". 0.23% would mess anyone up, let alone an 18 year old skinny enough to fall through a 7 7/8" gap.

I'd also point out the obvious fact that the legal drinking age in the US is 21, not 18.

"This certainly was a tragic and terrible accident and our heartfelt condolences go out to Ms. Smead's family..." Madison (Thomas Madison Jr., board chairman and commissioner of the state Department of Transportation) said. "We can do everything in our power to make sure that a system is safe and reliable, but there is always that variable of personal responsibility that's involved in these circumstances."

YES!!! I'm so glad he articulated that point. There is that variable of personal responsibility- very well put.

Holy shit, at .23% she must have been close to dieing from alcohol poisoning anyways.

No.
Death usually doesn't result until about .50. Most people pass out at about .30. That's one of natures little ways of protecting dumbasses. Of course, if you are drinking at a rate that is faster than it is absorbed into the bloodstream, then you can easily bypass this nifty little defense mechanism, slip into a coma and die.

In reality, at .23, she would've been obviously imebriated. Slurred speech, stumbling, what have you. It's sad, really. Completely, and totally, preventable. And not by the LIRR.

I once took a woman to the hospital for a psych evaluation, and she was walking, talking, and seemed just a slight bit intoxicated. (alcohol had nothing to do with the reason that I was taking her to the hospital. Threatening to hang herself the minute she was alone did...)

.44 BAC. Hardcore alcoholic...

I agree they should install rails on any exposed areas of the tracks. I've been on many trains and subways and find them terrifying. While we're at it we should install rails along roadsides. Those cars are close, and they aren't even constrained by tracks!

Absolutely. I suggest we accelerate testing asap. We can save funds by pulling random bar exam submitters as our crash-test-dummies.

Wow. .23 on a kid that skinny... and that dumb...

I am going straight to hell.

Only if you're skinny enough to fit in that tiny chute. ;)

They want to have the study so more idoits don't fall into the gap and can then reproduce to have more idiots. Then the newborn idiots can grow up and hurt them selves which will lead to further studies. It's all a racket really.

Most safety things happen because someone dies and they then retrofit a solution to prevent that death the next time.

Ever wonder why airplanes are safe? Lots of deaths, each one of which resulted in a procedure to make that death not happen.

Personally, I don't think they should rest until subways are safer than airplanes! Or, at least, the marginal cost of preventing one death is, say, 5 million 2005 dollars.

Dude... we're not talking about public safety. This was a kid NOT of legal drinking age, VERY intoxicated, and SO SMALL that she fell through an ~8" gap.

On top of that, she then CRAWLED into the path of an oncoming train.

That is not a public safety issue. You cannot safeguard reality from every possible permutation of unknown stupidity, like was shown here.

While safety is a good aim to have, this is an asinine application of "precaution". This person's stupidity and drunkenness lead to a series of missteps that cost her life.

What I want to know is, who got her underage ass drunk?

That's besides the point. Trains are already safer than planes. Not much safer, but they are. America's full of litigious bastards it seems.

Yeah - if her family wants to sue anyone, I'd say it's the idiot who got her/let her get so drunk she was insensible. If it was all her... well... I'd say that's natural selection for modern times. It's a shame she had to die due to being stupid, but that's exactly what happened. No one to blame here, really. Just her.

Cite?

Source:
Source:
1 billion air passanger-km in 2003 and 2004 (averaged) kills about 0.1 people.
1 billion rail passanger-km on rail kills 4.1 people on average.

That places Railways at 41 times more dangerous, per passanger-KM, than Airplanes.

:lol: Priceless

No. The obvious solution is fatter people. Anyone not fatter than the gap will not be allowed to board the train.

A one foot gap seems huge... That's fairly rough design isn't it? Even accounting for express trains needing to speed by and needing room in case they're rocking slightly.

I would think that they could improve this slightly. If only for the elderly passengers and young kids.

I was going to apply for funds for a similar study, but got busy filling out grant paperwork to fund my study to determine where your lap goes when you stand up.

I've been around .35 and still standing (this is an estimate based on medical formulae, I don't remember anything other than a few isolated moments, and I had to be reminded of those to recall them.) The morals of this story are that some people can drink a lot and still be standing, standing doesn't mean you should be trusted to do anything other than vomit and sleep, and that it's easy to black out if you don't keep track of what you're drinking and kill half a bottle of 99 bananas, three beers, and 7 shots of absinth in an hour.

I lived in Japan for seven and a half years, and one thing I appreciated about the Japanese system was that they had on their train platforms about a two-foot wide strip of raised dots ran the length of the platform that would alert anyone and everyone as to the immenent presence of the train tracks, so everyone knew when stepping on the dots that they were close to the tracks.

Everyone knew that if you went beyond the strips and got hit by the train, it was your own fault. And that was not too uncommon, as many school-age kids would commit suicide by throwing themselves in front of the on-coming train because their grades weren't good enough to make it to a higher school....

It makes me wonder if the young lady in the OP didn't want to end her life....

Yes, I'd just love to see them decrease the gap minimum there.... and then hear all the fuss as someones coat gets caught by a train speeding by.

And a 1-foot gap is not huge, think something roughly the width of a floor tile at Walmart, that's about a foot. It's not hard at all to step across one of those tiles.

Haha, I love people that dismiss tragic accidents as Darwin-Awards. Yes, you're superior on account of not having a horrible stream of luck.

Unfortunately for the rest of us that have to hear your self-rigtheous bullshit.

Luck did not play a part in this case. It was stupidity and poor judgement (if you discern between the two) that caused this death.

To be honest, I think if you were that intoxicated you wouldn't notice the bumps. I seriously doubt bumps make any difference to someone that drunk.

My thoughts, Intoxicated or not, it was an accident. Accidents will and do happen. It is neither reasonable nor possible to prevent all of them nor should the government be required to. It would seem as though thousands of people a day safely use this transit system with no ill effects. that seems like a reasonable safety rate to me. there is no government regulation in the world that can specifically make people safer, only people's surroundings and they shouldn't be over regulated. (yes, you guessed right, none of my cars have air bags or antilock brakes. and I survive driving over 50 miles every day in all weather conditions including ice covered snow just fine)

i'm wondering how many of you people calling this gal stupid would fare in her familiar surroundings i.e. snow and ice storms like you wouldn't believe would you have the 'common sense to dress for the real possibility of a sudden storm or drop in temperature? i guess my point is mistakes happen even to intelligent people with tragic results. if this was a popular politician you'd be calling it a tragic fluke.

Even if it were my favourite politician, my mom or even my dog, an accident is still an accident. shit happens and an entire transit system shouldn't be re designed because of it.

No no. Do not stand near the edge as the train goes by...

But yeah, on difficulty, I'm not thinking about a normal person here. I'm talking about the infirm. Basically I'm saying that design criteria can be tightened slowly over time. Why not? It'd make it easier for the wheelchair bound.

(I'm sure I could manage 3 feet no problems. But that's not the point)

I'm talking about criteria for new stations also, not upgrading all existing stops.

actually LIRR and MTA have special ramps to bridge large gaps since most trains do have gaps that cannot easily be traversed by those in wheelchairs.

A steering wheel belt would solve this problem.

Thin alcoholics would instantly gain the necessary inches to prevent painful falls from train platforms. Should an out-of-spec platform allow a fall, the airbag would deploy, cushioning the fall and any impact with oncoming trains.

Had any of her friends been carrying their Pocket Fisherman they could have retrieved her in time. Stupid friends.

Tragically stupid idea for a tragically stupid accident.

Shop RonCo.
http://us.st11.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.c..._1923_46866796

We have ramps here. But it takes them a while to setup. Mind you - if they know there's somebody on the platform, they'll usually be ready when the train arrives.

But back on the clearance thing, I think (I couldn't confirm though) that Singapore has a pretty small gap on their MRT. Much better than old Melb stations, ie our older lines were built in the era of steam, while theirs are shiny-new.

Of course, you're not allowed to chew gum on the train there...

Oh, the irony of talking down to people, telling them they're full of bullshit, and then calling them self-righteous, simply because you disagree on a topic.

First of all, calling someone an idiot is not making a declaration of superiority. Just because she happened to act like an idiot, and I am not an idiot, doesn't mean I have a God complex. I can make an observation and not be putting myself on a pedestal.

If I say that girl was an idiot, that doesn't mean i'm applying to be a chapter head of Mensa. When I call her an idiot, i'm not really saying "she is an idiot, and therefore i'm a fucking genius". I'm just pointing out that she's an idiot. There's a huge difference.

Look down at your foot.

That's approximately a foot.

You can just get your foot in the gap longways.

That's huge?