Quote:
Originally Posted by Flying Pig
Is this your own personal experience, or are you just guessing? Perhaps I should give a little more detail. If you have a squeamish or sensitive disposition then don't read any further.
Certainly if you are in the four foot and are hit by the main bulk of the train (couplers, buffers, body) then you will receive an enormous amount of kinetic energy. This is highly likely to be fatal.
Sometimes people aren't in the middle or don't get hit squarely, so are side-swiped by the peripheral equipment such as shoe gear or sole bar plates. This is usually fatal but people have survived despite considerable physical trauma.
However in many cases people jump into the path of a train. It's hellishly difficult to estimate the exact time to launch yourself when the train is thundering at you, and people often get it wrong. If they go early they land on the ground and parts of them get run over by the train, which often results in amputation. Sometimes they bleed to death before medical help reaches them, and sometimes they survive.
In any case, it sadly isn't the 'quick end' that they had anticipated.
So the purpose of dropping the word Fatality when advising the public, is to end the myth that the train always kills you.
You may think it's petty but surely it's worth a try - for everybody's sake ?
|
Thanks for the description of casualty kinematics and trauma. 32 years in the fire service means to me that casualties in which life is extinct are fatalities and no amount of glossing changes that. In this country we are already doing something in that we have passenger incidents and a few years ago after a serious train crash there was public objection to the use of the word incident.
In reality if a person who's mind is unbalanced enough to commit suicide the use of nice words won't make a lot of difference they will have a go somehow. Still there is no harm in trying to change things.
Richard