Fellow passengers rescue woman who fell on tracks at Kendall station
By adamg on Mon, 10/15/2012 - 9:46am
A Minnesota visitor who fell on the Red Line tracks at Kendall Square last night was helped out by other passengers, the MBTA reports. According to an MBTA Transit Police report on the incident, shortly before 7 p.m.:
[The woman's husband] stated they were talking with some friends on the inbound platform and [she] was walking backward. He stated that she continued to walk backward into the pit and fell into it. He then jumped into the pit to help get her out and other passengers assisted in lifting her onto the platform. [She] reported injury to the neck, hips, and dizziness.
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Dizziness
Seems like a preexisting condition, possibly alcohol-induced?
You don't walk backwards in a subway. Derp.
You do if you're from Minnesota
And not used to our narrow subway platforms. Derp.
My #1 hope for upcoming software update, adam...
...is that it lets us auto-block unregistered anons and their obnoxious, cynical ramblings.
Hope the woman is ok, and that she enjoys the rest of her visit here to New England. Mind the gap ma'am!
Yeeah, because it's only anons . . .
With cynical, obnoxious ramblings. Please.
Oh, and she needs to do more than mind the gap.
The gap is the samll space between the platform and a train in the station.
She needs to watch where she's going a lot more closely.
Hope she's OK.
Don't know about you, Adam
But when I travel to a city that I'm not familiar with, I pay a lot more attention to where I'm going, what I'm doing, and what is around me than I do at home.
Being from Minnesota or DC should mean "whatch where you are going unless you know a place well", not "mindlessly walk off the platform".
I hope she isn't too seriously injured. The T should probably modify the platform to stop oblivious tourists from plunging, no?
Was not backing up
If you watch the video carefully, she does not walk backward into the pit as her husband states. She walks backward toward the pit, turns to her right, take two steps forward, walking parallel to the pit, then steps off the edge; all while staring at what appears to be a cell phone.
I do hope she is OK, but I hope more so that neither the T, nor the city faces a lawsuit over another case of someone not paying attention to where they are going.
If your head hits the round
If your head hits the round from a height of several feet you may very well experience dizziness derp.
If your head hits the ground
If your head hits the ground from a height of several feet you may very well experience dizziness derp.
Check the actual video, not the report
If you watch the video, she was actually walking forward when she fell off. She had backed away from the fare gates while talking to someone. She even turned to her right (camera left) and started forward a step or two before her right foot didn't land on the platform and she went off sideways to her right.
This was a case of ignoring the bright yellow tactile-bumped surface while distracted with a phone, drink, and conversation all at once while walking next to a 5 foot deep pit.
The people who jumped onto the tracks to help her are better
than I am. I'm so terrified of the third rail that I get paranoid when I step near the yellow line.
Kudos to them for jumping onto the tracks to help get her up.
The 3rd rail is on the far
The 3rd rail is on the far side.
I know but I'm stil scared
I ride the Red Line all the time and have since I was a little kid but I just know I'm going to be that one person who somehow manages to land on it.
People who fall on the tracks
I'm sorry if I appear to be politically incorrect, but what is it with these morons who keep falling onto the tracks at T stations in recent years? It has become a regular occurance. Remember that other woman at Kendall a few months ago who simply stepped on air and fell in with her child? I'm sorry, but it has nothing to do with being a tourist, with being from Minnesota, with being "unfamiliar" with our T system. If you are on a narrow platform and there is a huge pit with an electrified rail in it, AVOID THE PIT. It's truly as simple as that. There is nothing fundamentally unsafe about the structure of the Kendall (or other) T stations that invites falling into the pit, narrow platform or otherwise. Unless you actually slip on something like ice, a banana peel or other slippery substance, you really have to be in another world to fall in.
My Guess...
Probably not any real increase in falls, but now we have pics (both surveillance & personal) that help make this a real story. Before the internet, someone fell in and a couple of people helped him/her out and then told their friends. Now, the witnesses plaster the pic all over Facebook and blogs and Twitter and it ends up on places like here.
yes, odd
Have people been falling into the pit all this time and it's only now that the availability of the video surveillance has made it into a news item?
I see no husband in the video
I see no husband in the video walking with her, nor any friends. How is it that 'they were talking' when she seems to be alone in the video?
Out without her Responsible Male?
*horrors* What is your deal with control of females in your life?
Way to miss the point.
Way to miss the point. Please read the original post before jumping to hostile conclusions.
Before I saw video
Thought I had this figured out.
Assumed her tourist group were walking 6 abreast and dawdling and someone with someplace to go nudged past. Oops.
Harsh, maybe. But I've been a tourist and I know I'm not clueless like some I see. Pick up the pace, you're in a damn city.