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There's a strict protocol when dealing with 'a collision with a person', as the euphemistic term puts it. On a passenger's train, it's the conductor who has a legal obligation to open the doors, climb outside, confirm the collision and walk back to search for the hit person, to establish if medical assistance needs to be offered or cover the remains before the clean-up team arrives. The driver, already exposed to psychological trauma, stays inside and warns the authorities.

There doesn't appear to be such a protocol in Hungary. In the first train suicide in which I was 'involved' as passenger, it was the driver who climbed down but only took a glance at the front of the train, the rest was for police/ambulance (then again, this was in a town). In the second case and the "third case" (when the driver was mistaken, see upthread), the driver and conductor both got down to check for remains.

End last year, network operator ProRail, responsible for the Dutch train infrastructure, repeated its (annual) intentions to redesign accessibility of specific high risk locations which are infamous as a spot for jumping in front of trains. The operator fenced with a sum of three million Euros for redesigning accessibility the coming years. The infamous locations were kept secret.

I'd bet that one of these infamous locations is a local train station, halfway between Leiden and The Hague. It was the third suicide at that location in 2012.

Of course, fencing won't help in the case of the station platforms among the high-risk sites. On metros at least platform doors help.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Fri Jan 11th, 2013 at 05:30:16 PM EST

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