Last night, on my way back from Leamington to Coventry, trains were disrupted due to a suicide at Martson Green station. Whilst these incidents are obviously very tragic for all involved, if the information given by Virgin Trains boss Crhis Gibb at a meeting in Rugby in September is anything to go by, they appear to be quite a common occurence.
Press release sent to local paper & radio.
A Coventry-based transport expert has called for more action to be taken in order to reduce the number of incidents where fatalities are caused by people being hit by trains.
James Avery, 34, who runs the travel websites Flightmapping.com and UnitedStations.net, was affected by last night’s disruption, which caused chaos for rail passengers in the West Midlands area, after a fatal incident at Marston Green station. Said Mr Avery:
”It is a horrible thing when someone decides they want to take their own life, but doing so in front of a train has massive consequences. Of course, passengers can get over the disruption relatively quickly, but the train driver, and any other people who witnessed the tragedy, could be traumatised for life.
Preventing such events is clearly very difficult, as jumping in front of the train is a very quick and sudden way to end one’s life, but there must be early warning signs to look out for.”
Mr Avery, who has bipolar disorder (manic depression) himself said that he understood the feelings people must be going through, especially with the current economic uncertainty, and with last night being rememberance Sunday.
“We had a spokesperson visit the local Manic Depression Forum a couple of months ago, and they discussed the very difficult issue of suicide. I raised the issue of people jumping in front of trains at that meeting because it had happened to me before when I was on a train in Canada. Whilst it is not my position to comment on the difficult circumstances any individual may be going through, I do feel that there are particular exrtra consequences of jumping in front of trains which need to be understood.
If there any actions which can be taken to prevent further rail suicides from taking place, then I hope they can be looked into. For example, can more training be provided to CCTV operators, so they can look out for the kind of behaviours which indicate that someone on a station platform may be suicidal? Is there more that can be done to raise passenger awareness? To my knowledge, for all the excellent work that the Samaritans do, I’m not aware of any posters on display at railway stations, whereas well-known ‘jumping spots’ like the Clifton suspension Bridge in Bristol have a number of notices giving people numbers to call if they need help. Even if putting posters in stations meant losing advertising revenue, surely this would still be worthwhile the train operating companies, as they are the ones that have to bear the financial costs of passenger disruption, as well as dealing with their staff who have to go through these terrible incidents.