scary MBTA incident last month

[ron_newman]

This young lady got hit by a large bag, fell off the platform, and nearly got killed by a train:

http://jujube-1980.livejournal.com/59557.html

She says it happened on February 28, presumably during morning rush hour. She doesn't say it happened in Davis, but she mentions Davis a couple of times, so it seems likely.

(Disclaimer: I don't know her, don't know anything about her, and am assuming that the story is fact rather than imaginative fiction. I found it during a routine Google blog search for "Charlie Card")

Comments

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

This was a couple of years ago, but I asked a MBTA officer how often people fell in the track pits and he said system wide it worked out to about one or two a week. People only hear about it in the press if they get hit or if they 3rd rail.

I don't ride the T much anymore, but back when I was a regular commuter I saw people get knocked onto the tracks twice, but people helped pull them out.

[kpht.livejournal.com]

If this ever happens, I've noticed the universal sign for incoming trains to stop immediately is a flashlight waved into the tunnel (I saw it firsthand at N. Station while they were doing platform work and saw it in an article where a cop saved a guy who'd fallen). I'm one of those who has an LED flashlight on their keychain so I'd assume others have the same. Just worth mentioning. Sometimes the train stopping 10 feet earlier is what it takes.

That, and if you know that train's coming and you won't get up on the platform in time, run into the tunnel 20 feet or so - train's stopping anyway, just avoid that third rail. I'd assume a lot of people panic and try to get out at the spot they dropped and waste valuable seconds when they can most likely safely get out if they outrun the train.

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

Does anyone else think it's *not* cool of Ron to post that link here without asking the author? Yeah, it's a public post on the web, but if the writer of that post wanted it to be posted for everyone in davis_square to see, she would have posted it here herself.

[ron_newman]

She's fine with it -- follow the link and you'll see. I found it with Google Blog Search, and that's about as public as anything can be.