I would be very surprised if this could happen in central london.
1) the tubes are packed and the cabs locked.
2) they would have be murdered by the other commuters.
3) you can't get in or out of the station without being seen on CCTV
4) each train has CCTV coverage.
5) its almost impossible to get out of the tube via the tunnels, without being electrocuted or run over (All but the cut and cover tunnels are <1' bigger than the trains)
For point 2, even in legitimate cases where someone has keeled over, you get death stares. The only time its seen as acceptable is when someone falls inbetween the gap between the train and the platform edge.
From memory, the NYC subway has a lot more space in tunnels, making this much easier to do. The London underground has very tight tunnels and you'd probably be turned into mince if you tried this there (that is, if the commuters didn't get to you first).
Fun fact - the tunnels are so tight in the Underground that there's not much room for much airflow around the trains and the clay surrounding the tunnels has absorbed so much heat that it can't take in any more, which is why it gets so stifling in summer. People used to go down to the Central Line to cool off in summer! https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2017/06/10/cooling-the-tube...
Regarding 5, emergency brakes in London won't stop the train in the tunnel. They just send a signal to the driver to wait at the next station and inform staff at that station and/or emergency services.
Pulling the emergency brake therefore isn't necessarily a bad idea. If someone has fallen ill on the train (esp. common in summer), it's the best way to ensure that help will be available as soon as possible.
As you said, evacuating trains in the tunnel is dangerous so it's only done if trains physically can't move to the station (e.g. another train blocks the tracks). And even then, evacuation is only done after electricity has been switched off via the end of the train.
> For point 2, even in legitimate cases where someone has keeled over, you get death stares.
And with good reason, because that is not a legitimate case. It is displayed on signs on many routes that the emergency services can best help/reach you on the platforms. Pulling the emergency brakes in the tunnel is actually counter productive if someone keels over.
I've always heard never to use the emergency brakes for a medical emergency because then you'd just stop the train in the middle of a tunnel and greatly delay responses.
Is point 5 true for the newest tunnels like the Jubilee Line Extension? I think the DLR has an emergency walkway in the tunnels to Bank. I am expecting Crossrail will too.
With my tinfoil hat adjusted: maybe this is a plan to push for CCTV acceptance in NYC. Annoy commuters enough, present surveillance as a solution, get agreement.
> 2) they would have be murdered by the other commuters
In the spirt of HN's policy of not being snarky I will attempt to temper my reply. As a native NYer: I find it Laughable that a Nation which, in effect, gave up its Sovereign Government to the EU and, outlawed Free Speech by banning "hate speech" (which is in fact--Anything that your Overlords say it is), would attemp to draw the line at someone pulling the EBrake on a train.
Sorry, but that is as Non-Snarky as I could make my reply.
one night i woke up flying across a subway car before slamming into one of the vertical hand poles
i was sitting, sleeping, facing the direction of travel and someone had pulled the emergency stop
it was 3am so the only people on the train where fellow transients
this fact must have been prominent in the mind of the person conducting the train because immediately they got on the comm and yelled, 'WHO THE FUCK PULLED THE EMERGENCY STOP?!'
the absurdity of it all helped me ignore the pain in my shoulder
i always slept with my back to my momentum after that night
This is the why I always choose the reverse seats if possible.
Of course if someone is sitting opposite to you then they’ll slam into you in case of an accident, but I still think the chances of survival are better when facing rearwards.
As a south indian who has travelled pretty much all over the world, I cant even describe how I feel reading this article. Because you see, in India, the trains don't even have doors. It is the travellers responsibility to not fall out :D. And then there is such an Emergency pulley in each car with the handle painted red. But since no one has ever used it or changed in multiple decades, it is completely rusted and sealed with dirt. So it is near impossible for any individual to completely pull that lever down. The levers are also directly connected to the trains brake system, meaning you are actually directly applying the brake. I have seen 4 people pulling and hanging on to that lever handle to actually stop the train. Sigh!
Okay. This is a bit of an exaggeration. The poster above is talking about long distance trains while the article is about subway trains.
1. Most trains in India do have doors.
2. Almost all modern subway in Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai etc do have doors. The trains won’t move till the doors are completely shut.
3. Mumbai is one of the few cities which has an ancient train system which overlaps with the national long distance trains and is separate from the subways but still carries the bulk of the people. Trains/EMUs on this do have doors but people generally don’t close these in rush hours.
4. These days even long distance trains in India have their doors closed shut and you do get reprimanded for trying to keep the doors open (happened to me multiple times)
5. The part about chains being rusted and difficult to pull is probably true.
6. Delhi metro (and I suspect others too) don’t have chains. You have a button and speaker near every other door to talk to the driver in case of emergency.
7. Trains have doors. People just don’t close them.
Gotta say, for anyone worried about the surveillance state and stuff, NYC is the perfect city. Through a unique combination of a dense, diverse, super populated metropolis and pure incompetence, you really can disappear in the crowds.
That’s simply not true anymore. Our NYPD operates the so-called “Domain Awareness System”, which is a combination of good old database connected to terminals in patrol cars and precincts, as well as metadata-rich security cameras. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Awareness_System
The system doesn’t get talked about very much, but even regular patrolmen are trained to use it effectively. It’s built to accommodate a variety of use cases ranging from tactical support (“suspect headed north on Amsterdam Ave, but then we lost him - where did he go?”) to general investigative duties (“who usually comes by this store on Mondays at 9am?”) and, based on what I’ve heard from cops, works really well.
He was caught sleeping on the street at 10:30 AM, so maybe not exactly a master of evasion, but still, 2 days to catch him ain't bad.
He was caught 2 hours after the police sent an alert to people's phones by someone who got the alert, but not too quickly for Anil Dash to criticize the alert as useless:
The use case is some sort of emergency that the driver may not have seen.
SF's Muni is in the process of onboarding new trams from Siemens. Someone recently stuck their hand in the doors as they were closing. On pretty much any newish tram or subway vehicle this will cause the doors to open again. It's shitty behavior, but that's what people do. Typically trams in the United States have door interlocks such that if the doors are open the vehicle doesn't move. The new Siemens cars apparently don't have well calibrated pinch sensors and the damn thing took off with some idiot woman stuck in the doors, dragging her down the platform.
I've had similar experiences with the older ones (where the drivers would deliberately disable the interlocks — this was before they put tamper evident bits on the override switch). The driver closed the doors as I was boarding. Without looking at his/her mirrors the driver took off as I had one foot on the street and one on the vehicle.
Same deal with people who've fallen onto the tracks.
Here’s a story: landed in Schipol (AMS) from Berlin with a good friend of mine. Jumped on a train and was half asleep when the train rolled in to the station just before Amsterdam proper. I forget the name.
Just as he train was about to pull off, a man approached us and said something incoherent in Dutch. Before we could even utter our confusion, he grabbed the backpack on my lap and ran for the doors. I followed him but not nearly as fast as I would like. He was jammed between the automatic doors and I caught a glimpse of him yanking himself onto the platform, where he stumbled and started sprinting.
My cries alerted other passengers who immediately pulled the emergency break. The doors opened and we went into hot pursuit.
Sadly, we never did catch the man that day. The backpack had my laptop and many important documents, but by the grace of some Unknown or my own laziness my passport was still in my pocket. In fact when we got to the police station I thought it was in the bag, and their attitude there visibly changed when I was able to produce it. They took a statement and that was that.
So the emergency brake is useful in some situations...never did get that bag back though ;)
>It's like saying there's a "turn engines off" lever on an airplane next to the bathroom.
No, it's not, it's like saying there's plane controls in the cockpit. The break is in a cab that should be inaccessible to riders.
>He climbs aboard the rear of the train as it departs a station, unlocks the safety chains, somehow gets into the rear cab, and triggers the emergency brakes.
I've been wondering - how much would it cost to hire people to subtly sabotage a large city in order to cause financial losses. Say you're a nation state and want to mess with your rivals. There's some optimum for how much you can spend to cause your rival to lose a dollar and still come out on top. That will depend in who you are and who your rival is.
It seems like it should be fairly good bang for buck, in this sense, to just hire people to drive around kind of slowly and badly. Nothing overtly aggressive, but a few dozen people driving slowly around a few select traffic circles around rush hour should really gum things up.
Even better if you can cajole some people into, say, pulling emergency stops on subways. Note I don't think that's what's happening in NYC, but this case does seem to show that a few people could cause outsized disturbances just by being assholes.
A few people used to live in the Amtrak tunnels on the Hudson River side of Manhattan. There was a documentary made about them [0]. They were evicted, and the tunnels fenced off, in the late 1990s.
I would be quite surprised if anyone was living in the subway tunnels. Compared to the Amtrak tunnels, they are much narrower. Additionally, people were living in the Amtrak tunnels during a time when the tunnels were unused or seldom used by train traffic. In contrast, subway tunnels see lots of traffic 24 hours a day.
“Cars ending in 1, 5, 6 and 0 have single full-width cabs and are known as "A" cars.
Cars ending in all other digits have no cabs and are known as "B" cars”
, I guess it is about 40% of that, or 2,600.
So, about 2,600 cameras (motion detectors might already be enough, if the culprit spends sufficient time in the cabin) in the cabs likely would solve the “what do they look like?) problem. Because of the differences in car widths, you even likely need fewer to cover the lines where this occurs a lot.
Don't you think it's a bit less of a problem when it's isolated to a single vehicle intended for private travel? By this logic, it applies to every single road vehicle. What does it matter about whether it has a human or machine brain inside?
Seems more likely that something is triggering the emergency braking system than some rogue, random dude risking his or her life to pull this stunt that often, AND go undetected.
[+] [-] KaiserPro|6 years ago|reply
I would be very surprised if this could happen in central london.
1) the tubes are packed and the cabs locked.
2) they would have be murdered by the other commuters.
3) you can't get in or out of the station without being seen on CCTV
4) each train has CCTV coverage.
5) its almost impossible to get out of the tube via the tunnels, without being electrocuted or run over (All but the cut and cover tunnels are <1' bigger than the trains)
For point 2, even in legitimate cases where someone has keeled over, you get death stares. The only time its seen as acceptable is when someone falls inbetween the gap between the train and the platform edge.
[+] [-] frereubu|6 years ago|reply
Fun fact - the tunnels are so tight in the Underground that there's not much room for much airflow around the trains and the clay surrounding the tunnels has absorbed so much heat that it can't take in any more, which is why it gets so stifling in summer. People used to go down to the Central Line to cool off in summer! https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2017/06/10/cooling-the-tube...
[+] [-] dx034|6 years ago|reply
Pulling the emergency brake therefore isn't necessarily a bad idea. If someone has fallen ill on the train (esp. common in summer), it's the best way to ensure that help will be available as soon as possible.
As you said, evacuating trains in the tunnel is dangerous so it's only done if trains physically can't move to the station (e.g. another train blocks the tracks). And even then, evacuation is only done after electricity has been switched off via the end of the train.
[+] [-] krisoft|6 years ago|reply
And with good reason, because that is not a legitimate case. It is displayed on signs on many routes that the emergency services can best help/reach you on the platforms. Pulling the emergency brakes in the tunnel is actually counter productive if someone keels over.
[+] [-] morpheuskafka|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SilasX|6 years ago|reply
Oh, I'm sure 99% of the NYC-area ridership is planning exactly this.
My immediate reaction to this story was, "Prankster, go into hiding now if you want to survive the week."
[+] [-] faissaloo|6 years ago|reply
Not during the middle of the day, which would have a knock on effect
>each train has CCTV coverage.
You could always keep a change of clothes
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] din-9|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] luckylion|6 years ago|reply
With my tinfoil hat adjusted: maybe this is a plan to push for CCTV acceptance in NYC. Annoy commuters enough, present surveillance as a solution, get agreement.
[+] [-] RaceWon|6 years ago|reply
In the spirt of HN's policy of not being snarky I will attempt to temper my reply. As a native NYer: I find it Laughable that a Nation which, in effect, gave up its Sovereign Government to the EU and, outlawed Free Speech by banning "hate speech" (which is in fact--Anything that your Overlords say it is), would attemp to draw the line at someone pulling the EBrake on a train.
Sorry, but that is as Non-Snarky as I could make my reply.
[+] [-] subweigh|6 years ago|reply
one night i woke up flying across a subway car before slamming into one of the vertical hand poles
i was sitting, sleeping, facing the direction of travel and someone had pulled the emergency stop
it was 3am so the only people on the train where fellow transients
this fact must have been prominent in the mind of the person conducting the train because immediately they got on the comm and yelled, 'WHO THE FUCK PULLED THE EMERGENCY STOP?!'
the absurdity of it all helped me ignore the pain in my shoulder
i always slept with my back to my momentum after that night
[+] [-] theNJR|6 years ago|reply
If lots, how was that allowed to happen? If few, why not more?
[+] [-] unixhero|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] layoutIfNeeded|6 years ago|reply
Of course if someone is sitting opposite to you then they’ll slam into you in case of an accident, but I still think the chances of survival are better when facing rearwards.
[+] [-] Darkclouds_1921|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] inapis|6 years ago|reply
1. Most trains in India do have doors.
2. Almost all modern subway in Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai etc do have doors. The trains won’t move till the doors are completely shut.
3. Mumbai is one of the few cities which has an ancient train system which overlaps with the national long distance trains and is separate from the subways but still carries the bulk of the people. Trains/EMUs on this do have doors but people generally don’t close these in rush hours.
4. These days even long distance trains in India have their doors closed shut and you do get reprimanded for trying to keep the doors open (happened to me multiple times)
5. The part about chains being rusted and difficult to pull is probably true.
6. Delhi metro (and I suspect others too) don’t have chains. You have a button and speaker near every other door to talk to the driver in case of emergency.
7. Trains have doors. People just don’t close them.
[+] [-] Darkclouds_1921|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ramraj07|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxaf|6 years ago|reply
The system doesn’t get talked about very much, but even regular patrolmen are trained to use it effectively. It’s built to accommodate a variety of use cases ranging from tactical support (“suspect headed north on Amsterdam Ave, but then we lost him - where did he go?”) to general investigative duties (“who usually comes by this store on Mondays at 9am?”) and, based on what I’ve heard from cops, works really well.
[+] [-] yellowstuff|6 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Times_Square_car_bombing_...
Also took 2 days from the first attack to catch the NYC/NJ bomber:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_New_York_and_New_Jersey_b...
He was caught sleeping on the street at 10:30 AM, so maybe not exactly a master of evasion, but still, 2 days to catch him ain't bad.
He was caught 2 hours after the police sent an alert to people's phones by someone who got the alert, but not too quickly for Anil Dash to criticize the alert as useless:
https://twitter.com/anildash/status/777849637592006656
[+] [-] knolax|6 years ago|reply
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/27/technology/personaltech/a...
[+] [-] YayamiOmate|6 years ago|reply
I can imagine at least some testing if relations improve and stabilise a bit.
[+] [-] newsbinator|6 years ago|reply
... we assume
[+] [-] Justsignedup|6 years ago|reply
- If the subway needs to stop via an external decision, there are triggers all over the rails to trigger an emergency break.
- If you are sick, emergency break is actually worse than waiting to get to the next station.
- If anything is happening. Emergency break is wrong.
- If something is in view of the conductor, the conductor will do the correct action.
- If the train is going too fast, there is already a timer and an automated emergency break triggered on the rails.
I cannot think of a single good reason for this. It's like saying there's a "turn engines off" lever on an airplane next to the bathroom.
[+] [-] inferiorhuman|6 years ago|reply
The use case is some sort of emergency that the driver may not have seen.
SF's Muni is in the process of onboarding new trams from Siemens. Someone recently stuck their hand in the doors as they were closing. On pretty much any newish tram or subway vehicle this will cause the doors to open again. It's shitty behavior, but that's what people do. Typically trams in the United States have door interlocks such that if the doors are open the vehicle doesn't move. The new Siemens cars apparently don't have well calibrated pinch sensors and the damn thing took off with some idiot woman stuck in the doors, dragging her down the platform.
I've had similar experiences with the older ones (where the drivers would deliberately disable the interlocks — this was before they put tamper evident bits on the override switch). The driver closed the doors as I was boarding. Without looking at his/her mirrors the driver took off as I had one foot on the street and one on the vehicle.
Same deal with people who've fallen onto the tracks.
[+] [-] nsomaru|6 years ago|reply
Just as he train was about to pull off, a man approached us and said something incoherent in Dutch. Before we could even utter our confusion, he grabbed the backpack on my lap and ran for the doors. I followed him but not nearly as fast as I would like. He was jammed between the automatic doors and I caught a glimpse of him yanking himself onto the platform, where he stumbled and started sprinting.
My cries alerted other passengers who immediately pulled the emergency break. The doors opened and we went into hot pursuit.
Sadly, we never did catch the man that day. The backpack had my laptop and many important documents, but by the grace of some Unknown or my own laziness my passport was still in my pocket. In fact when we got to the police station I thought it was in the bag, and their attitude there visibly changed when I was able to produce it. They took a statement and that was that.
So the emergency brake is useful in some situations...never did get that bag back though ;)
[+] [-] ken|6 years ago|reply
This is the conductor’s control they’re using.
[+] [-] atoav|6 years ago|reply
Or if the doors won’t close and the train starts to move.
Or the classic: there is a fire in the train and waiting for the next station is not an option.
[+] [-] astura|6 years ago|reply
No, it's not, it's like saying there's plane controls in the cockpit. The break is in a cab that should be inaccessible to riders.
>He climbs aboard the rear of the train as it departs a station, unlocks the safety chains, somehow gets into the rear cab, and triggers the emergency brakes.
[+] [-] rebuilder|6 years ago|reply
It seems like it should be fairly good bang for buck, in this sense, to just hire people to drive around kind of slowly and badly. Nothing overtly aggressive, but a few dozen people driving slowly around a few select traffic circles around rush hour should really gum things up.
Even better if you can cajole some people into, say, pulling emergency stops on subways. Note I don't think that's what's happening in NYC, but this case does seem to show that a few people could cause outsized disturbances just by being assholes.
[+] [-] panarky|6 years ago|reply
2017 derailment https://imgur.com/a/7Bn0bqC
2013 ignornace and fuckery https://imgur.com/a/lPrB0Gx
[+] [-] spookybones|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codedokode|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elliottlan|6 years ago|reply
If yes, could this be people brazenly deciding they need to get from A to B, climbing aboard at A and stopping the train wherever B is?
[+] [-] g_sch|6 years ago|reply
I would be quite surprised if anyone was living in the subway tunnels. Compared to the Amtrak tunnels, they are much narrower. Additionally, people were living in the Amtrak tunnels during a time when the tunnels were unused or seldom used by train traffic. In contrast, subway tunnels see lots of traffic 24 hours a day.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Days_(film)
[+] [-] kyleblarson|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] caf|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forkandwait|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rb666|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Someone|6 years ago|reply
“Cars ending in 1, 5, 6 and 0 have single full-width cabs and are known as "A" cars.
Cars ending in all other digits have no cabs and are known as "B" cars”
, I guess it is about 40% of that, or 2,600.
So, about 2,600 cameras (motion detectors might already be enough, if the culprit spends sufficient time in the cabin) in the cabs likely would solve the “what do they look like?) problem. Because of the differences in car widths, you even likely need fewer to cover the lines where this occurs a lot.
[+] [-] Amboto2205|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tepix|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jfoster|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bubblewrap|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] magwa101|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] jamisteven|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tsubasachan|6 years ago|reply