I have been under the impression that the subway trains could not move unless all the doors were shut and locked; however, my cubicle neighbor Sarah relayed a terrifying experience she had on the subway this morning.
Over the white partitions that separate our work spaces, she recounted witnessing a twenty-something professional on the F train subway platform at 14th and 6th, whose hands were stuck in the closing doors of the last car around 8:15am. As the train began to move, he was forced to jog alongside the train and was screaming as the passengers inside pounded on the doors and tried to pry them open. From where my coworker sat in absolute shock, she saw him begin to cry as the train picked up speed and other commuters on the platform looked on in horror. The man's hands were eventually freed from the doors before the train left the station.
I bet he'll always just wait for the next train from now on.
And a quotable subway encounter from The New York Times, May 19, 2008:
"If one foot wasn’t on a sure step, I would have fallen in, and I would have been eaten up by the escalator."
LISA CHIOU, who was injured when a Manhattan subway escalator broke apart last year.
The lesson here? Commute in New York at your own risk.
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8 comments:
That is frightening!
Damn. I would've bet money that couldn't happen. Good to know!
OMG, Not going to lie, that probably would have scared me! Knowing my luck it would happen to me. From hereo on out, I probably will probably listen to the craziest lie that we hear on a daily basis: "Please stand back, there is another ___ train directly behind this one".......
Ha! I know the feeling :)
I totally would have bet my entire 401(k) and my ROTH and Traditional IRAs that it couldn't happen either!
That's basically all the money I have available to bet. If it doesn't come out of my paycheck before payday, it goes to rent and groceries and happy hours.
OMG! I'm so glad I know that! That is absolutely insane!
Thanks for the terrifying warning. SEriously, I am afraid of the subway now!
It happened in the past, every once in a while, you hear news about people getting drag on the subway platform, get injured or even fatality because the subway door would not open to allow people to free him or herself. I think they put an automatic sensor in most of the subway car doors now, but the operation of the doors still requires the train conductor to manually turn the keys to open or close the door. In an international big city like New York, the subway train and the system is kind of primitive compares to many other international cosmopolitans.
What can you do? Especially many of the trains are terribly slow, not arriving to station frequently, and not on time. Sometimes it takes 30 minutes or more to wait for a train to come (at some station, it is not unusual to wait for more than an hour).
Another thing that many New Yorkers do is avoid walking over pothole cover, metal plate, and metal grid that covers the subway escape exit on the street level, for the fear of these things blowing up or get electrocute while walking over these things in the snow during the winter. Anything can happen in New York City.
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