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Surveillance video of that woman falling on the Orange Line tracks
By adamg on Mon, 11/09/2009 - 1:58pm
Still from an MBTA surveillance video just as the train stopped.
The T provided hree separate videos (three? Yes, three) of the woman falling off the platform - looks like one of the people waving at the oncoming train almost fell on the tracks himself.
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Comments
Holy...
In the video, it looks as though she actually does contact the third rail at one point. I guess she must have missed it by a sliver. Wow.
Suldog
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luckily it looks like she
luckily it looks like she was wearing sneakers.
I'm not certain, but I thought I've read that rail isn't actually electrified until the train comes into the station. Still, the train was coming into the station.
Something tells me this young lady's going to take it easy the next few weekends.
Dangerous misconception
The entire stretch of third rail on a given line is electrified at all times unless there is an emergency or maintenance being performed on it / near it. You have to close down a pretty big chunk at a time too.
How this woman survived is beyond me. It looks like her right toes bounce off it. Even with sneakers between you and a 600VDC source, the odds are really in not in favor of you surviving.
megaohms
If I put my multimeter across my (reasonably) dry shoes, I measure a DC resistance in the tens of megaohms. So that would be less than a milliamp of current, below the threshold of sensation.
But okay okay, I'd be unwilling to stick my foot out. And this is from someone who regularly zaps himself with 200Vdc in the lab.
And wow...
...I didn't realize she was at the end of the platform. I presumed it was somewhere well down the platform.
That was incredible, I hope
That was incredible, I hope they give the driver a few days off to get her bearings. I would be very shaken up by this, it was a close one.
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They let the operator take
They let the operator take some time off.
News accounts suggest it was really rough on her.
I can imagine, I think my
I can imagine, I think my heart would have slammed into my rib cage
Twitter me this!
It really does look like she
It really does look like she bounces off the third rail. And dude closest to the tunnel looks like he actually gets hit by the train
Also, Im surprised at how many cameras there are on MBTA property....and how good their quality is. The fox video showed the scene from three different angles.
Somewhere ...
... a guardian angel is having a nice cold beer after a very tough shift!
Thank heavens the other passengers saw something and said something ... and the driver realized that coming to a stop was the fail-safe way to respond.
Amazing video.
Glad she's OK, and good work by all (others) involved.
BTW, is it more disturbing that Fox report Erin Hawksworth wrote "emergency break," or that an editor missed that?
she's hot, so no, not
she's hot, so no, not surprised.
Journalism isn't about intellect anymore.
Really lucky everyone around her was so attentive.
According the the article on boston.com she "told police she had been drinking for several hours before the incident." So for someone who was smoking a cigarette at the edge of the platform, and clearly stumbled drunk onto the rails and even "came up with a big smile on her face" when they pulled her out. She is damn lucky.
For once I am very proud to tell the MBTA they did a damn fine job. And that woman owes her life to them and the bystanders (who probably had kept her distance because of the cigarette smoke) that flagged the train.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/200...
Yeah... considering that
Yeah... considering that she's a smoker, she's lucky they made the effort to save her. She should thank her lucky stars it wasn't yuppies standing near her - they'd let her die.
Any fines?
Will she get fined for smoking in the station?
Like you know everyone in the world....
...who you would dismissively characterize as "yuppie".
Pulling her up
Those flaggers...
She was lucky those guys were so close to the end of the station. It might be the angle, but on TV, it looks like the guy closest to the train actually got bumped by it when it stopped.
Almost got bumped
I just switched the link to Channel 4's version, because it has two more views of her fall and recovery. In one of them, the camera's basically right in that guy's face and you can see the train came as close to hitting him as it did the drunk woman.
Fell or jumped?
Sure looked like 'jumped' to me. On the other hand, after the train stopped, she got up on her own -- but then fell down again.
That driver deserves a medal and a bonus -- I'm astonished she was able to stop the train in time. Also good to see someone had the good sense to start frantically waving and that the rest of the waiting passengers quickly followed his lead.
She was checking to see if
She was checking to see if the train was coming. If you notice she did the weave back and forth twice. With her obvious impairment she was trying to look as far into the tunnel as possible without realizing that if she walked a few feet away from the wall it would be easier to see...
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Good call
Yep, looks like she was trying to peer around the wall. Was trying to figure out why she was extending her upper torso, and I think you're right.
If one is extending to peer around a wall, the shoulder blades go back, so one of the reflexes (Landau? I think?) makes the back and legs go into extension too. So she fell in extension, which is pretty much the same as a jump. If she'd not been extending to look around the wall and had just stepped off the edge, she'd be more in flexion and would have fallen curled up and landed on her butt.
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Hitting bottom
I believe that's the 12-step term for drunkenly staggering off a subway platform into the path of an oncoming train. Looks like she had that fateful "one drink too many".
She hasn't thanked the driver yet
One can only hope that this is because she is an inpatient at a drunk tank. Somehow, I would suspect that this wasn't her first such bender ... hopefully, it is her last. The woman walks way older than the late 20-something that she is reported to be.
A cure for constipation
That video makes me crap my pants.