| These were my first thoughts too. Even in otherwise (mentally) healthy people such accidents happen with some regularity but with the history of this particular illness afflicting him and the nature of the incident (walking away and then turning back before impact) makes the police's statement sounds dismissive and reckless at best and a coverup for the train company and/or avoidance of some significant workload (investigation of an avoidable death by train company vs a suicide of a mentally ill person) for themselves. People with such illnesses typically hear voices and at any given time they could be engaged in a rather deep conversation with them(selves). Even if he was not listening to music and such or was otherwise distracted by something else it would not be surprising for a person of his illness to not being able to hear the train approaching. When he finally heard it, he apparently did turn but it was - unfortunately - too late. Someone with more insight into the manner of train suicides would hopefully weigh in with more informed opinion but as far as I understand the typical way is to jump (not always literally) in front of the train. Simply walking away from the train provides ample opportunity for an alert driver to stop or slow the train both of which are undesirable for the suicidal person and one (the slow train running over you) could be much worse than the other options. Rather it seems the train driver failed (some one with more technical train knowledge would correct me here if there are some other reasons for not applying brakes in train even after seeing an - apparently - oblivious man walking away from the train) to stop the train in time and prevent an avoidable death. I could be wrong but there is the possibility that it would be much desirable for the train company and easier (given the history of his illness) for the authorities to dismiss his death as suicide rather than hold the person(s) responsible for the accident accountable for their actions. |
Other hand a friend of mine with psychosis threw himself in front of a BART train.
Also with a train there nothing to engineer can do since the coefficient of friction between the steel wheels and track is like 0.05 vs close to 1.0 for rubber and asphalt. The engineer can't stop the train in time. These accidents take a bad toll on train engineers.