Speaking of suicide...



I took this picture a few years ago on my way back to the Bay Area from San Diego. This on the I-5 and Hwy 14 interchange south of Santa Clarita. Traffic had slowed down to a crawl. He jumped to his death about an hour later.

Quoting PHX787 (Reply 29): I appreciate the input guys, even despite my apparent controversial views on this subject. But trust me on this, they aren't just my views, they are the views of quite a lot of people here.

Looking for validation in numbers?

Quoting AeroWesty (Reply 25): The way Clarkson meant what he said was as a joke

Very often hard to tell with him.

Quoting rutankrd (Reply 7): Suicide is the most selfish of actions really.

So?

I'm getting on and when my life becomes intolerable - to me - I fully intend to end it. I will not end my days as an old man in a wheelchair with drool dribbling down my chin, someone else wiping my arse and a lot of doctors feeling smug because they kept me alive for so long - against my wishes.

Selfish? You betcha. It's my life.

mariner

Quoting SmittyOne (Reply 37): A person whose day has been made needlessly more difficult by someone else's actions is not being 'selfish' for calling it out, any more than someone who objects to getting mugged! This pity party has got to stop. People have the right to kill themselves all they want, but do it on your own time and your own dime! I like the idea of going after the estate of the deceased if they choose to do this.

I think you're attaching a value judgment to my statement that I didn't intend. Selfishness is just putting one's own considerations ahead of those of others. Not a pity party on either side. I think committing suicide in public is being selfish, just as being pissed off because your relatively few minutes in commuting time trumps the needs of police, etc. to clean up the mess and investigate is selfish too. (I mean, let's face it, once it's done, it's done. It's different when the delay is talking down somebody who's going to jump from a bridge. Doing that in public is an obvious cry for help. We're discussing completed suicides here). Not saying either is better or worse than the other, or even more or less selfish. Just that they both are literal self-interested prioritizations.

Quoting IADCA (Reply 40): I think you're attaching a value judgment to my statement that I didn't intend. Selfishness is just putting one's own considerations ahead of those of others. Not a pity party on either side. I think committing suicide in public is being selfish, just as being pissed off because your relatively few minutes in commuting time trumps the needs of police, etc. to clean up the mess and investigate is selfish too. (I mean, let's face it, once it's done, it's done. It's different when the delay is talking down somebody who's going to jump from a bridge. Doing that in public is an obvious cry for help. We're discussing completed suicides here). Not saying either is better or worse than the other, or even more or less selfish. Just that they both are literal self-interested prioritizations.

Makes sense to me - rant officially retracted  

Quoting Confuscius (Reply 38): Speaking of suicide...

DAMN!

A few years ago I was doing my regular commute on a Metrolink train from LA to Palmdale when the train struck someone laying on the tracks on the outskirts of the Santa Clarita Valley, wreaking havoc on the evening commute schedule with passengers on the Antelope Valley Line trains scheduled after ours resorting to alternate transportation provided by the agency.

Those of us onboard the train that "did the deed" didn't have that luxury of finding alternate transportation as the incident occurred in a remote part of the valley and we had to hold out until the Sheriffs completed interviews with passengers and crew as well as clearing the "debris". I can never forget looking out from our window to the curve where the strike occurred and seeing birds picking at the body as we waited for the authorities to reach the scene. We arrived home close to midnight, about 5 hours later than scheduled. By then, transit connections from the train were long gone making it hard for those that relied on public transportation entirely to get from work to home.

The comments with regards to this form of suicide seen in this thread echo what I kept on hearing onboard and were further exacerbated when the likes of air conditioning and working lavatories were slowly cut off as the wait grew longer, updates were rare, and tempers understandably rose.

Remarks like "why couldn't he have just hung or OD himself instead of f*cking with our commute?" constantly came up as we waited. Having been personally impacted by losing an old friend to suicide, I can't say it's as "easy" as it sounds. What does such inconveniences matter to the person doing the deed? By then you've already forgone not just your life but the lives of your loved ones who will be forced to live with this and will remember this event more than just "that one day our commute went to hell". So if you've already disregarded such in such a destructive, irrational state of mind, what does affecting a larger group of strangers--ranging from the several hundred of us Metrolink riders to the 1-2 million JR East commuters--matter to the person? It's not like they'll be alive to see the ensuing sh*tstorm and face the consequences of their actions themselves***.

Selfish? Yes, but indeed rationality and the deeper depths of depression aren't exactly fine dancing partners. Going back to my old friend, heaven knows how many times I tried doing my part to intervene and how much more I wish I could've done. Christ, she was already 5150ed a couple weeks before she hung herself. She had a beautiful mind, so much talent, and a loving husband and son who visited her often in the hospital. You'd think she had a lot going for her. Going off on another tangent, I remember her thoughtfulness when she brought me a copy of NW's in-flight magazine from her trip. As much as I love collecting them, I didn't think I needed the magazine as I was about to fly LAX-NRT-MNL-NRT-NGO/NRT-LAX on NW with plentiful opportunities to grab my own copy but I greatly appreciated her thoughtfulness. Lo and behold when I did the trip, there were none of that month's World Traveler were to be had! I made sure to make the effort to thank her when I returned...only to find out that she hung herself just hours before I came back from NRT.

_______________


***That is unless you decide to botch it at the last minute and have 11 people killed instead. Then you just get to see the consequences yourself and live with it while serving multiple life sentences in prison.

Quoting Confuscius (Reply 38): Speaking of suicide...

God, I remember that one too! I wasn't commuting that day (not that I would've seen it as the tracks go on tunnel under the 5-14 interchange) but remember hearing it often among the commuter chatter for the following days from folks that use that interchange to get home.

[Edited 2013-05-16 16:07:56]

Quoting MaverickM11 (Reply 22): It's certainly not going to get better with that attitude!

That's the Japanese attitude toward most things that are too difficult/emotional to deal with. If something is too めんどくさい (a catch-all phrase for bothersome things), most people here are happy to just look the other way. If there is any real weak point to this society, that's one of them.

Quoting PHX787 (Reply 29): Simply saying "hi" to others on the street may help a little in my opinion.

It absolutely would. But in a culture and language system with feudal roots, there remains a stark contrast to the needle-in-a-haystack-in-a-metropolis lifestyles of many young people here.

Make no mistake people, the baby boomer generation here has a lot of the blame for this. Many Japanese parents coddle their children quite generally, and people I know have done ridiculous things like travel to their university-age kids' homes on weekends to help them clean, and take them to the convenience store to SHOW THEM HOW TO PAY UTILITY BILLS.

Imagine how that young person is going to be screwed when they get into the working world, encounter some hardship, and are living away from their family in a massive cauldron of daily stresses and teeming masses like Tokyo. Recipe for depression for sure.

Happens all too frequently in these parts as well. This happened only a couple of weeks back, I ended up being late to the office, along with thousands of others. For those who don't know Melbourne, Flagstaff station is a downtown subway station. Most suicides here happen in the suburbs where it's quite easy to get onto a track, rare for a suicide to happen on one of the city stations.

At 7.30 on a weekday morning at a busy city station, there would have been quite a few witnesses on the platform as well as on the train......

Quoting offloaded (Reply 2): If someone feels that there is no other way out that is incredibly sad, but yes, very selfish also to jump in front of a train, but I'm thinking of primarily the driver and the clean up crew.

That's the saddest part of these incidents. There are innocent onlookers and the driver who see the event happening. Those are the ones I have sympathy for.

Quoting PHX787 (Reply 5): Well there have been some injuries which have occurred when someone else commits suicide. One of my friends was on board a train which hit someone, and when the driver hit the emergency brake, my friend fell against the wall and got a concussion. Couldn't play basketball for the rest of that season. Also in 2011 when a woman jumped infront of the Narita Express train (google it if you don't know what it is) her body flew back into a kiosk on the platform and injured four others. But man realize that the traumatic injuries are often unrepairable.

The other problem, particularly with subways / metros is that there may be a packed train stuck in the tunnel behind. If that situation is not resolved promptly there may be additional injuries (e.g. dehydration) on that train.

Quoting rutankrd (Reply 7): Here in London there are such jumpers most weeks.

The average is about 1 per week, although some weeks there may be none and other weeks there may be several. A month or two ago there were 5 in a week. Sometimes there are 3 on the same day.

Quoting kiwirob (Reply 8): In the 2.5 years I lived in London I was stuck on underground train 3-4 times due to suicide by train, one of my flatmates for a time was a guard on the Northern Line, he reckoned every driver on the Underground had been involved in a suicide by train incident, some drivers had multiple suicides under their belts, he had been involved in one.

Some have gone decades without one, others seem to attract bad luck. Some go back to work almost instantly, others never return. It's sad when an incident like this ruins someones livelihood.

Quoting 9MMPQ (Reply 17): Several years ago now I have seen a man in the last few possible seconds calmly & purposely step off the platform right in front of an oncoming train while i was heading home after college. I certainly did not think or make a problem of the fact that i was going to get home later via an excruciating detour. As i did then & still do now whenever i hear of something like this happening my only thought is how sad it is that another human being just like us was so down & out that he or she could only see suicide as a way out.

As part of my job I manage and investigate incidents like this. It is incredible what some people do. There was one - I won't go into details as it was a particularly nasty one - but they must have been in a really bad place to have the guts to do what they did. They must have been desperate.

Quoting stealthz (Reply 27): This is only possible in a "new build" system that uses a standard train design. Older systems that have varying car designs and platfoms that serve multiple train systems can't be fitted this way.

It can be done on older systems provided there is standard stock. The problem is that the doors are heavy and expensive which in places would require expensive platform strengthening. Also, a lot of older platforms are curved which means more bespoke doors would be needed which adds to cost.

Let me point out that while I write, there has been a suicide every day this week, except for today (Sunday) and Wednesday. I again almost did not make it back home when I was coming back from the sky tree. I was on a subway which continues onto normal railway tracks, where someone committed suicide, and we, about 20 stations back, were stuck. Again. I got out and wandered about the platform and ran into some other ex-pats who were rather confused and pissed off. They had no idea how to get back to their hotel. The trains only run so late and they were staying in Yokohama. I helped them find a different station about 3km away (they had to walk there) and then to catch a different subway to Shibuya (which I joined them on) and then they took a separate train back to Yokohama. They caught the last train of the night.

Tell me again how my views are being selfish.

Quoting mariner (Reply 39): Looking for validation in numbers?

I don't need to provide "numbers" here as this is a general viewpoint. I was discussing this with friends all week and they all agree that it's a major deal.

Quoting vikkyvik (Reply 36): Why can't public suicides be part of the "natural order of things"?

I personally think death should be a private affair. It's tragic enough when someone dies, especially when it's early. Why make it public and involve people who have their own lives?

Quoting aaron747 (Reply 43): That's the Japanese attitude toward most things that are too difficult/emotional to deal with. If something is too めんどくさい (a catch-all phrase for bothersome things), most people here are happy to just look the other way. If there is any real weak point to this society, that's one of them.

Yeah I agree. This is the issue, especially when I discuss this with friends. People always say it's "Mendokusai" but do nothing to alleviate this.

I have a penchant feeling that if this was a major thing back in the 20s or so there would be "campaigns" to fix this. Why not now? Japanese society seems to be "slowing" down a bit.

Quoting aaron747 (Reply 43): It absolutely would. But in a culture and language system with feudal roots, there remains a stark contrast to the needle-in-a-haystack-in-a-metropolis lifestyles of many young people here.

Yet still with these youth they refuse to partake in something like this. Interestingly enough in the countryside whenever I visit everyone stops and says "konnichiwa" to eachother, even if they are strangers. It was a very refreshing experience, especially given the beauty of Oku-tama.

Quoting PHX787 (Reply 46): Tell me again how my views are being selfish.

Will do. If someone committed a public suicide like this, that probably means they needed some serious help. Help that (apparently, from what I'm reading here) isn't exactly readily available, or even really accepted is being needed, in Japanese culture.

When it gets to the point of feeling the need to commit a public suicide, something likely went wrong years earlier, and the perpetrator/victim likely did not get the help he/she needed. Said person most likely did not get up this morning, think "I'm gonna go inconvenience a few hundred thousand travelers today", and jump in front of a train.

Quoting PHX787 (Reply 46): I personally think death should be a private affair. It's tragic enough when someone dies, especially when it's early. Why make it public and involve people who have their own lives?

Death usually is a private affair. The majority of people keep it that way. That's why there is likely something very wrong when someone makes it public.

I'll quote what I said before:

Quoting vikkyvik (Reply 36): Again, I think it's a societal thing, and I'd wager that the very fact that people are more annoyed by it than anything is probably a factor, knowingly or unknowingly, in causing this type of suicide to happen.

Quoting B747-4U3 (Reply 45): Some have gone decades without one, others seem to attract bad luck. Some go back to work almost instantly, others never return. It's sad when an incident like this ruins someones livelihood.

I don't know if this is true or not, but I have heard that train drivers on the Melbourne system get an automatic 8 weeks off if they hit someone. They'd be tied up for quite a while with the resulting investigations anyway. The drivers do make good money here (generally 6 figures once fully qualified, with OT & shift penalties), most drivers would regard this as one of the hazards of the job.

Quoting vikkyvik (Reply 47): When it gets to the point of feeling the need to commit a public suicide, something likely went wrong years earlier, and the perpetrator/victim likely did not get the help he/she needed. Said person most likely did not get up this morning, think "I'm gonna go inconvenience a few hundred thousand travelers today", and jump in front of a train.

I believe the vast majority of the research indicates that it is a last minute decision. In some cases they may even enter the station with no intention of killing themselves, and then something will suddenly change. Of course there are others which are planned.

Quoting melpax (Reply 48): Quoting B747-4U3 (Reply 45): Some have gone decades without one, others seem to attract bad luck. Some go back to work almost instantly, others never return. It's sad when an incident like this ruins someones livelihood. I don't know if this is true or not, but I have heard that train drivers on the Melbourne system get an automatic 8 weeks off if they hit someone. They'd be tied up for quite a while with the resulting investigations anyway. The drivers do make good money here (generally 6 figures once fully qualified, with OT & shift penalties), most drivers would regard this as one of the hazards of the job.

That is certainly possible. 2-3 months seems to be the normal recovery time from such an incident during which the driver may attend counselling. They would normally return and ride through in the cab not driving for a while, normally doing shorter shifts, and then gradually build themselves up to doing longer shifts and taking over driving again. Again, everyone is different. Some are quite traumatised by the experience, others see it as an occupational hazard and return relatively quickly.

Quoting PHX787 (Reply 46): I again almost did not make it back home when I was coming back from the sky tree. I was on a subway which continues onto normal railway tracks, where someone committed suicide, and we, about 20 stations back, were stuck. Again. I got out and wandered about the platform and ran into some other ex-pats who were rather confused and pissed off.

You're lucky you were in a platform and could leave. In the past 2 years I've been stuck on a train in the middle of nowhere twice. On the first occasion we were right behind the incident train and had to sit for two and a half hours - most of it in complete darkness because the electricity was cut and the back up batteries only last about 30 mins. On the second occasion we were outside of the current section so we still had the lights on, but we were there for nearly 2hrs. Ultimately there is no point getting angry about it as once someone has jumped there is nothing you can do apart from wait until the Emergency Services and Railwaymen have cleared up.

Quoting PHX787 (Reply 46): about 20 stations back, were stuck

I'm surprised why - being that far back - the Controllers didn't start getting the drivers to change ends, shunt across a set of points and head back the other way in service. Do Japanese Metros not have many reversing points?


Just out of curiosity, everyone here mentions "suicide" when we should perhaps be saying "attempted suicide". From my experience a significant proportion of the time they fail. Sometimes - once recovered from under the train - they walk out of the station (in Police hands). Other times they suffer horrific injuries but are still alive.