A person is on the subway tracks injured/dying what should the onlookers do?

911 won’t be there in time, likely.

I won’t fault somebody for not jumping in there. Nobody is obligated to risk their own life to save someone else. However, anyone that would is extremely admirable.

I would like to think I would risk my life and jump down and drag them to safety. Realistically I would probably walk away so I didn’t have to witness their death and hope someone else is a hero.

edit:: I should add that I am six feet tall and 130 pounds. I’m not sure I could move anyone that isn’t a supermodel.

@Mariah and @johnpowell correct on both counts. But what is the thing to do to save the person?

Depends. Can you hear a train coming? Trains come into stations fast.

If you’re brave enough and you think you have enough time, jump in.

So, there’s no other option?

Look away. haha
I’m not strong enough to jump down on the tracks and drag/lift someone out of harms way. If nobody else jumped in to rescue them I would just cover my ears and run, sad but true.

Depending on the trains running on that track, one thing that has frequently been done in such cases is to jump into the track pit (avoiding the third rail, obviously), rolling the person between the tracks to present the lowest possible profile, then the rescuer getting down as low as possible, too. The train carriage generally has enough clearance off the track (and the track is already raised on the crossbars and ballast) so that it should be able to clear the people who will be stuck underneath until the engine can be uncoupled from the cars and moved to clear the people, who can then be lifted to safety with more time once the trains’ movement has been stopped.

This strategy would never work with trams, for example, which generally run at street level and have very low clearances. But commuter trains and subways are generally built so that track obstacles won’t derail the train, and “an animal body on the track” is one of the obstacles that has to be considered by railway management, so the trains have that clearance built in.

I don’t think jumping in would solve the problem. There are transit police at every station. I’d think they would do something about it.
Anyways, I was once at the end of a platform looking down the tracks and once the train came, the conductor came out to ask me what I was doing. I was on the phone, so I was a bit confused, and he said he had asked me because I set the emergency alarm off. So I guess there are sensors on the tracks to inform the trains that someone’s there.
I always get texts saying that there are delays due to “police action” or a “medical emergency”. From looking at the news the next day, this can mean someone has been on the tracks.

Of course, another perfectly valid – and potentially effective – rescue strategy is to run up the track in the direction that the approaching train will emerge from, and flag the engineer to go slow. Engineers understand that a human flagging them with frantic arm-waving means that there’s a good reason to go slow. If the engineer is doing his job and awake, he’ll slow to a manageable speed before entering the station.

This would certainly not be an advisable practice if the train is going to emerge from a tunnel, because even if the engineer sees the person in time in the dark (even with his lights on), the signaler may not be able to find clearance between the train and the side of the tunnel as the train moves by (since it won’t be able to stop for the signaler immediately), and he may become a victim himself, even if the train manages to stop for the other person.

There was a recent incident like this in my city. A lot of people say the only ethical thing to do is to jump onto the tracks immediately to save the person, but transit officials say it’s critically important to alert the people on duty first, so the electricity can switched off. Otherwise, the rescuer risks making the problem much worse by becoming electrocuted, or electrocuting the person they’re trying to save. Emergency phones are ubiquitous in these systems – call or have someone call first.

Link to the story.

Render help in any way, as quickly as possible. Be a Scout! Be prepared!

@dappled_leaves That’s what I was thinking…those tracks can fry you good. I’d just start screaming like mad to get staff to do something to stop the trains or turn off the electricity. If I raise enough ruckus they will come. I once walked in there and for some reason they thought I snuck in and they were on me in a heartbeat, so they are everywhere, and alert.
And while subway trains have emergency breaks, I’d never run up in advance to flag it. Even if it wasn’t for the electricity, subways from underground are fast as fuck, I’d get myself killed.

If it was a train, that’s different, I would move the person. You’re not supposed to move an injured person if you don’t know what you’re doing, but I think it can be forgiven in this case. I also have training in emergency care to keep people alive and conscious (or bring them back through cpr) until medics arrive. Mind you I’ve never had to make use of it, but in such a situation I sure as hell would, at least hopefully I would be able to keep my cool and use the proper techniques and methods. (you’re also trained to keep your cool, but really, until it actually happens…)

@Symbeline Yeah, I agree. Totally different rules between subway and trains. You also don’t have the scary “can I/we climb back out again” question to deal with.

They should do whatever their instincts tell them, mine would be to grab my phone & set about making a snuff movie :D

@dappled_leaves Yeah, I would hope that if it was safe to jump down there, people would at least help you take the person out to safety. Because unless it was a small child, I’m not exactly fuckin Xena here. XD

@ucme LOL XD

I’m not familiar with the 3rd rail, but if someone was versed and leading, I would go down in to help them.

911. if the subway’s not due for 15–20 minutes, it can be stopped.

Try this.

If you ride the train regularly (I do), one way to pass the time on the platform is imagining scenarios like this.

So I have a plan.

I would make sure someone else is calling 911/alerting the station agent/hitting the HELP button.

Then I would jump down on the tracks. If I couldn’t get help the person up, I would get both of us into the space under the platform.

Here’s a diagram

This happened to me a couple of years ago…an idiotic woman jumped on the tracks to “save” a mitten she had lost. The train was two minutes out. In this case, because she was capable of walking, I yelled at her to climb back up and helped her when she was unable to do so by herself. I managed to pull her up – with the train already in sight – , but I am still angry with her even today. She had a kid with her. That girl would have seen her mum get hit by a train because of a mitten.

In general, it all depends on how far out the train is. If I thought I could make it, I doubt I could just stand there.

I would call the emergency number, and if there was a way to get others to help pull the person up off the track that would be great but people tend to freeze when anything like this happens. I read somewhere about a guy called Wesley Autrey who did a very brave and selfless act he didn’t think twice and he saved a life at the risk of losing his own he spotted a young man having a seizure and fell onto the tracks Wesley Autrey dove onto the tracks. He thought he would be able to take man off the tracks, but he realized there was not enough time to drag the man away. Instead, he protected this guy by throwing himself over the guys body in a drainage trench between the tracks, where he held him down. Though the operator of the train applied the brakes, all but two cars still passed over them, close enough to leave grease on his cap.

By the way in the detail of my OP “Someone said call 911, someone else said…” these are not people in authority, experts in the area, but passengers.