Why don’t they just enact a law and stick a sign next to the emergency stop cord saying “$5000 fine for non-emergency use” and then list what constitutes an emergency stop?
I bet there’s a sign somewhere telling you how you’ll be fined if you smoke.
Well, then, let me tell you : People are right to warn the conductor when a fellow passenger is sick. They would deserve a pitting if they didn’t do so. And the conductor has to and anyway should make sure that the passenger get whatever medical help he needs, even if it inconveniences you.
Now, I’m sure that you can petition whatever authority is in charge of your subway system and ask them to make a requirement that every passenger will go through a complete medical check-up before boarding a train.
No, but there are signs about the penalty for punching a MTA worker.
You didn’t happen to read post #18, did you? It’s very instructive.
This is why I assumed the emergency brake was in play. If the train is just sitting in a station and someone needs medical help, this usually happens very quickly. When the cord gets pulled, not only does all of the traffic get snarled, it can be very difficult to get the train started again. In my years of commuter purgatory, this seems to be the usual cause of a serious delay.
Yep. Sick passenger is never left “alone”. Train must wait until help arrives. If you are lucky, a foot patrol is nearby and you can be on your way. Otherwise…
Okay, let’s get serious for just a second here.
The more I think it over, there’s obviously some MTA policy that baffles me.
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Dude gets sick at Woodhaven Boulevard
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Between Woodhaven and Forest Parkway (the next local stop) someone informs the conductor that there’s a “sick passenger” [DING! DING! DING! ALL HANDS ON DECK!! GO TO DEFCON 4!!! etc.] on the train.
At this point, in my experience of traveling on the subway for 40+ years (not all of it at once), the conductor will halt the train between stations, phone up whoever the fuck he phones up, and they will, in their own sweet time, meet the train at Forest Parkway. Usually this takes up to a half-hour, forty minutes sometimes, just for personnel to get to Forest Parkway. Meanwhile every fucking train on the line, containing hundreds if not thousands of commuters, just sits there.
Could someone tell me why the conductor’s call does NOT lead to scenario
2A)? Computing conservatively that personnel won’t reach the train for at least five minutes, maybe (probably) even ten, even if they’re sitting in a squad car two blocks from the subway, someone equipped with two brain cells to rub together asks for personnel close to, say, Van Siclen Avenue (a stop five minutes away from Forest Parkway) to meet the train? Or Broadway Junction, a stop ten minutes away? Or [and so on]?
Either way, the sick passenger will be met in the same five to ten minutes, but in 2A), all of the trains on the line will keep going for those five to ten minutes, and there will be minimal damage done to anyone, including the sick passenger. Could someone explain why every time this happens, the whole subway system screeches to a stop, until someone can lead the sick passenger out of the station to an ambulance?
Better yet, why can’t they figure out the nearest hospital en route, notify their ambulance squad to meet the train at the closest stop, announce that due to a sick passenger, the train will be running express to that station (passengers who want to get off at an intervening stop will have to get off there, and tranfer to a train in the opposite direction, a gambit they always use when doing routine track repairs) and everyone is pretty happy? This is just so totally fucked up, there must be governmental regulations involved somewhere.
I read it. As a general rule, I vastly prefer when people overreact than when they turn a blind eye. That’s the kind of society I would rather live in.
In doubt, I almost always call the emergency services (firemen, police, etc…), for instance. I’m yet to regret it and I know that in a couple instances it would have been a grievous mistake not to do so.
Okay, how many hours per week of me (and several thousand other commuters) would you be willing to consign us to sitting in a stalled train waiting for some numbnuts to be met by medical personnel to show up? Is one hour enough? How about six hours? How about we simply get on the train, sit on the track forever, and eventually turn around in disgust every time, until we get it through our thick skulls that the NYC MTA is more interested in covering its fat ass against a lawsuit by Numbnuts Et Al. than it is in running an efficient transit system? I couldn’;t think of a more inefficient system of dealing with sick passengers if I went to law school for three years specializing in defending civil actions against municipalities by selfish pinhead dog-turd numbnuts momos.
And why do you assume this guy’s Macedonian, hm? Some kind of anti-Macedonian prejudice?!
I can’t remember this ever happening on the Chicago el. Usually if there’s a delay, it’s because they’re doing some kind of repair work. Hm.
Probably a lot. Medical assistance for the numbnuts first, you being on time distant second.
And yes, I know that you can make up some scenario where it would better to let the numbnut without medical assistance. Or that you could make a point about one human life not being worth some ludicrous amount of time lost by the whole population of New-York.
But I still stand by my general rule.
By the way : I never noticed your screen name, and you’re a long-time poster, apparently. Did you recently take a new nickname?
I would rather they take my sick ass to the next stop (which is a few minutes away) than have me wait for half an hour between stops for emergency services while people who can’t help me get pissed while I get worse.
I’ve been prr for the last six years. Do you think I should change it–to “despiser of numbnuts momo fucktard selfish dogturd pinheads” maybe? It lacks that certain je ne sais quoi.
You say you read post #18, but you don’t respond at all to its content. I’d say you might have looked at it, but I see no signs of your having read it.
I responded by writing :
“As a general rule, I vastly prefer when people overreact than when they turn a blind eye. That’s the kind of society I would rather live in.”
I agree with this, although I don’t think they use it exclusively for suicide … when I hear the sick passenger announcement, I mentally put air quotes around “sick passenger” and assume it means whatever crap the MTA is up to that day. Double the odds that the “sick passenger” is a euphemism for something else if it’s the “sick passenger on the train ahead of us” announcement. In some cases, I think “sick passenger” is an excuse for mundane issues, and in others, a way to explain delays that have a reasonably high potential for panic … reports of a suspiciously abandoned package, for example.
Hey, I also ride the A from the to to the bottom of Manhattan! (That is, in the morning. In the evening I take the A train the other way.) I wonder if “impaled on a spear” and “under a pile of kitties” are near one another? 
So Flip Wilson could tell his joke on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, of course.
Y’know, people are sick. A lot. Unless somebody’s dying or otherwise incapacitated, contacting emergency personnel is simply pointless. They can’t do anything, anyway.
I was once that ‘sick passenger’. Sometimes it’s not the passenger’s fault.
Both my knees had torn ACLs (one is now completely blown out) and would buckle, turn and tear if torqued. On my way out the door at Atlantic Ave one night, the fucker turned, ripped and I hit the ground. Not wanting to inconvience anyone, I literally-- and when I say “literally” I mean it-- crawled the rest of the way out of the train and on to the platform. Since it was very late at night, I was in the middle car and the conductor saw me crawl out of the train.
No matter how much I insisted that I was fine and that I just turned me knee and there was nothing that an EMT could do for me short of carrying me the rest of the way home AND I was no longer actually on the train, the conductor held up that train for over an hour. I would have moved on if I was able but if you’ve ever had an ACL tear you’d know that isn’t really possible.
So there I was, on the platform clutching my knee while tens-- maybe hundreds-- of straphangers glared at me and wished me dead. It was more than embarrasing. When the cop (no EMT) finally arrived I told him that unless he had some powerful painkillers on him or a crane to get me up the stairs, there wasn’t much he could do for me.
P.S. 4 burley men whe were carrying a six foot trophy between them (I’m not kidding) got off the train and took turns being my crutches to get me down to the N train.
Youknow, it’s not that I don’t have sympathy for anyone who truly gets sick on a subway train, but the MTA policy of holdong up the train is senseless and really sucks.
I mean, it’s probably a a maximum of 15 feet to the nearest door on the train and I doubt most illnesses are so severe as to prevent someone from walking or being transported with the assistance of other passengers onto the platform. And of all the maladies that could possibly affect train passengers I doubbt than ANY of them involve possible spinal cord injuries, so the “don’t touch or move them” policy is really silly.
And once the person is on the platform, there is NO REASON to delay the train. Train stations have personnel, too.
Despite a prevailing reputation to the contrary, NYCer’s are very aware of what is going on around them and very quick to attempt to assist anyone that might need help. I can think of many occasions when I was faint or nauseous ( not uncommon at all considering the smell of many train stations) and went to lean against a wall or something only to have someone immediately ask me if needed help…of course, when I say no they back off, though.