What is the most plausible reason this woman fell into the subway tracks with her 4 year-old? Scroll to :36 for the fall.
Obviously she could be drugged /drunk but is it possible she was hyper-focused and didn’t even realize the tracks are below the platform? Could she have visually been tricked in some way? Very bizarre that she walked straight off, good thing she and the kid are ok.
Link didn’t work for me, but I’ll just go with “Too busy yapping on her cell phone”. Nine times out of ten that works.
Doesn’t look like she was on her phone. And I can’t see the child.
Can’t see the link, but it says she was carrying her son, saw a train pull up, (it was on the other side) and thought she could board it. Most likely her child’s body was blocking the area right in front of her and she couldn’t judge the distance to the train or see that the platform ended. If you’re not familiar with subway stations, it can be very disorienting trying to figure out which platform goes with which line/train.
This from the story:
Sometimes when I’m carrying one of my kids, I can’t see the ground immediately below and in front of me. I have to look around them to see what lies ahead. My guess is she saw a train in the distance, and her child blocked the view of what was (or wasn’t) in front of her.
I actually think the explanation she gave is rather plausible ("she saw a train berthed on the northbound platform and believed she could board "); I have very poor depth perception and have done similar, though not such extreme things. Like walk directly into trees, not because I was distracted, but because I misjudged how far away from me they were.
Basically, she’s in a rush, her eye focuses on the train in the northound track, brain misjudges which track the train is actually on, she strides purposefully towards it and off the platform.
ETA: and good point Happy L, she probably couldn’t see the track edge, giving no visual clue of her misunderestimation.
Yes, I have poor depth perception, and more than once in the bleary-eyed morning commute I’ve rushed to catch the train, only to realize I’m seeing the train across the tracks headed the other way.
I may jus’ be a country gal, but those subway platforms mildly terrify me. Open pits where trains zoom in at 4,000 miles an hour inches from your face. :eek: <shudder>
To tell you the truth, what scares me about those subway platforms as much as the idea of being struck by a train (should I fall off) is the thought of how filthy it is at track level.
See quote in Happy Lendervedder’s post. It helps if you read the article.
I did read the article, thank you. Plenty of folks explain why things happen in shock or due to embarrassment and I was mostly just curious how she could be so unaware of her surroundings.
Kendall is an exceptionally shallow platform. I can understand if she’s more familiar with other platforms her not immediately grokking that the train she sees is on the opposite track.
Are you perhaps blind?
No, but he’s talking on his cell phone…
Yeah, that’s a very purposeful stride she has- not the look of someone drunk/drugged, but rather like a hyperfocused commuter. I can actually totally buy her story, especially coupled with the ‘might not see the ground due to holding her child’ reasoning.
Assuming her story is true, why would she think the train door was directly in front of her and open?
She didn’t, she was just heading to the train she could see, but misjudged the depth of the platform.
When you have hundreds of thousands of commuters (millions?) using mass transit everyday, it is not surprising that something like this would happen. We know about it because the transit authority’s cameras caught the incident and the ubiquitous natures of the Internet and ‘news’ drive our attentions collectively to notice it.
I am pleased to know that the woman and her child were not injured.
OK, I’ll call out the elephant in the room; maybe she’s a dumbass?