Rail suicide
Rail suicide or suicide by train is deliberate self-harm resulting in death by means of impact from a moving rail vehicle. The suicide occurs when an approaching train hits a suicidal pedestrian jumping onto, lying down on, or walking or standing on the tracks. Low friction on the tracks usually makes it impossible for the train to stop quickly enough. On urban mass transit rail systems that use a high-voltage electrified third rail, the suicide may also touch or be otherwise drawn into contact with it, adding electrocution to the cause of death.
Unlike other methods, rail suicide often directly affects the general public. Trains must be rerouted temporarily to clean the tracks and investigate the incident, causing delays for passengers and crews that may extend far beyond the site, a costly economic inconvenience. Train drivers in particular, effectively forced into being accomplices to the suicide they witness, often suffer post-traumatic stress disorder that adversely affects their personal lives and careers. In recent years railways and their unions have been offering more support to afflicted drivers.
Research into the demographics of rail suicide has shown that most are male and have diagnosed mental illness, to a greater extent than suicides in general. The correlation of rail suicide and mental illness has led to some sites along rail lines near mental hospitals becoming rail suicide hotspots; some researchers have recommended that no such facilities be located within walking distance of stations. Within the developed world, the Netherlands and Germany have high rates of rail suicide while the U.S. and Canada have the lowest rates. While suicides on urban mass transit usually take place at stations, on conventional rail systems they are generally split almost evenly between stations, level crossings and the open stretches of track between them.
Prevention efforts have generally focused on suicide in general, on the grounds that not much can be done at tracks themselves, since suicidal individuals are believed to be determined enough to overcome most efforts to keep them from the tracks. Rail-specific means of prevention have included platform screen doors, which has been highly successful at reducing suicide on some urban mass transit systems, calming lights, and putting signs with suicide hotline numbers at sites likely to be used. Some rail networks have also trained their staff to watch, either in person or remotely, for behavioural indicators of a possible suicide attempt and intervene before it happens. Media organisations have also been advised to be circumspect in reporting some details of a rail suicide in order to avoid copycat suicides, such as those that happened after German football goalkeeper Robert Enke took his own life on the tracks in 2009, a suicide widely covered in European media.
History
The first recorded train suicide occurred in 1852 in England, where rail development in Europe had been most advanced. In 1879 an Italian researcher noted that railway suicides were most common in Italy's northern Piedmont region, where the rail network was at its most extensive. This led the sociologist Émile Durkheim to reason in his 1897 work Suicide that "the more the land is covered with railroads, the more general becomes the habit of seeking death by throwing one's self under a train," a proposition which has since been generally accepted as a rule.Japan's earliest documented rail suicide occurred in 1876, less than four years after the opening of the country's first railway line. The following month, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported a second suicide, cautioning its readers that "these days, a strange new way of dying has begun."
Methods
Rail suicides typically assume one of three postures: "jumpers" who jump in front of a train from a station platform, "liers" lying on the tracks as one approaches, and "walkers" who wander onto the tracks before the trains are present, a division first identified by researchers on the New York City Subway in 1972, who found jumping the commonest and deadliest in their sample. A fourth group included "touchers," all of whom were women, who often went on the tracks after trains had left and deliberately touched the electrified third rail. A German researcher also found some outlying methods like jumping from a moving train and jumping from a bridge into the path of an approaching train. A railway suicide can also be committed by a vehicle driver, such as the Ufton Nervet rail crash, which killed seven others on the train. In addition to individual suicides, joint suicides on railways have also been reported.Studies have found the preferred method differs by country. A 2005 Swedish study found walkers most predominant among 145 suicides, followed by those who sat or lay on the tracks with jumpers third, while a 2008 Australian study of 161 suicides along the Queensland rail network found sitters/liers most common with jumpers and walkers evenly split. German researchers in 2011, looking at over a thousand cases over five years, found the proportions nearly equal, with jumping the least likely to be fatal; twelve years later another group of Germans found liers the largest share, with jumpers close behind. A 2013 U.S. study of 50 suicides where this information was available found a slight edge for liers, with walkers and jumpers evenly split. Electrocution via third rails remains rare; it most often happens in conjunction with suicides on subways or metros, where the body comes in contact with the third rail as it is run over by the train.
German researchers believe walkers are most likely to have planned their suicides in advance, while jumpers do it on impulse.
Difference to trespasser accident
A collision with a suicidal pedestrian is different from a collision with an unauthorised person, a trespasser, who has illegally entered the tracks, and can be distinguished, according to the European Union Agency for Railways, by the presence of suicidal intent. Ovenstone criteria are mentioned for categorizing a suicidal intent.Locations
General locations along lines
Researchers have tried to determine what locations along tracks are more at risk for suicide than others. In response to a 2009 cluster of rail suicides by teens at a level crossing along the Caltrain commuter line in Palo Alto, California, the Mineta Transportation Institute at nearby San Jose State University studied 17 years of data from Caltrain on suicides and unintended pedestrian fatalities along the line from downtown San Francisco south along the Santa Clara Valley for any trends or patterns that might help prevent suicides. The researchers found that while only 20% occurred at stations, most were within of a station or nearby crossing. They theorized that people attempting rail suicide used the stations primarily to access the tracks, wanted to ensure that the train was traveling at a speed as high as possible, and that no one was able to interfere with them. Researchers in Canada have found that two-thirds of rail suicides there occur on open track, with only 2% at stations.In a broader sense, some sections of track seem more attractive than others; population density in the areas the line passes through may have some effect. The MTI researchers studying Caltrain suicides found that a section of track between the Burlingame and Sunnyvale stations accounted for a larger share of suicides than the rest of the line, and a greater incidence than trespass fatalities in that area. A Caltrain representative they contacted noted that that section was one of the oldest on the line, with largely residential areas adjacent to the tracks, whereas the line north of that section went through more commercial areas and into tunnels where it might be less accessible. The paucity of suicides south of San Jose's Diridon station was attributed to the lower frequency of train service between there and the line's southern terminus at Gilroy.
Other researchers have reported a similar correlation. A 2018 Belgian study found that the rail suicide rate over a five-year period was highest along lines in suburban areas. The researchers theorized that tracks in those areas are more accessible than they are in cities, and the trains operate at the same frequency as those in the nearby urban areas but at higher speeds. In what the researchers deemed "high-risk" locations, 2–km sections of line where two or more suicides had occurred during the time frame of the study, they noted that there were points where someone attempting suicide could easily hide, and where the driver had limited visibility.
However, a 2010 study in the Netherlands, which has the highest rate of rail suicide in Europe, found no relation between the population density of the areas adjacent to the tracks over a 57-year period. Instead, the Dutch researchers noted that suicides and attempts appeared to be concentrated on "hotspots", such as nearby psychiatric hospitals, a phenomenon also observed in the later Belgian study, as well as in Austria and Germany.
Three years later the same Dutch researchers undertook a comparative study of rail suicides in their country and neighboring Germany in the 2000–07 period, noting that despite many similarities the two countries differed where rail suicide was concerned—the Netherlands, despite a lower suicide rate overall, had a much higher incidence of rail suicide. Building on British research that found a correlation between the rail suicide rate and the overall passenger rail volume, suggesting that familiarity with rail transport might drive rail suicide to a greater extent than the mere availability of tracks, they identified four factors to use for comparative purposes using Poisson regression:
- population density,
- rail density, or the ratio between overall track length outside of privately owned enclosures and the country's land area;
- train traffic intensity, the ratio between annual train-kilometres and overall track length,
- passenger traffic intensity, the ratio between annual passenger-kilometres and the overall population of the country.
A 2006 German study of suicides on that country's rail network over 10 years that focused primarily on the relation between age groups and the overall suicide rate also looked at the locations chosen and the overall size of the rail network, which decreased by during the study period. It found that among rail suicides under 65, whose rate remained steady over the study period instead of declining as older suicides and the overall rate did, the rate also declined along with train-km and passenger-km. But it increased as the total trackage declined, as did a preference for using open track.
A 2015 Swedish study of suicide on the Stockholm Metro found that stations in areas with high rates of drug-related crime had higher suicide rates. In 2016 a Belgian study looked at regional variations in the rail suicide rate within the country over a five-year period. Paradoxically, poorer areas, like the center of Brussels, that had higher overall suicide rates had rail suicide rates below the national average, while more affluent West Flanders's lower overall suicide rate included the highest rail suicide rate in the country.