To think some people are completely lacking in compassion?

[SirBoobAlot]

I was in London yesterday. Got to Victoria for the train home around 6.30pm. Heard the following announcement; "Southern are sorry to announce delays on service due to a person being hit by a train". This was repeated every minute with various destinations. Basically, no trains going South.

I finally got on a train about quarter to ten.

I was disgusted by what I heard, both waiting at the station, and then when on the train. People complaining about wanting to get home, about how 'inconvenient' it was. Several comments of "fucking jumpers" - one woman even said "Why can't they just go to Beachy Head if that's how they're feeling?".

It made me feel sick. Yes, everyone was tired. Yes, everyone wanted to get home. But someone had fucking DIED. And with it being announced every ten fucking seconds, there was no way you could not know what the delays were caused by.

I was disgusted with people. Either it was a horrific accident, and someone lost their life, or it wasn't an accident, and someone felt horrific enough to end their life. Either way, someone died. What is a few hours at a train station if you get home?

I don't get it.

As others have said, once you've been commuting for awhile in London you get compassion fatigue. Also, a bit like soldiers and medical people, you develop a certain gallows humour to cope.

YANBU.

I feel like you do. I feel so so sad that someone's so desperate as to jump in front of a train. I do feel for the train drivers though as it must be so traumatic.

I feel sorry for people so lacking in compassion.

I watched a documentary on this. It's bloody awful for the drivers and the people who get to clean the remains up.

I can see how you would get hardened to it, when it's so frequent. :-(

Thank you to everyone who has posted their opinions and stories. I have learned a lot from this thread now understand that this subject is far more complex than I first thought.

My particular thanks, thoughts and sympathy are with those posters who have survived traumatic experiences. Their testimony in particular has been humbling for me to read. Thank you.

My opinion for what it's worth as a commuter. 'Fatality on the line' is not uncommon, especially in the vicinity of Wimbledon and Clapham due to the high volume of trains. When it happens there Waterloo stops! And trains don't move. People can't get information from the staff no one knows what the hell is going on and you can't move in the station for people. You can't get an estimate of how long the delay will be but know from bitter experience it'll be hours not minutes. All this time you're frantically trying to frantically arrange with your child's nursery alternatives because you're not going to get there in time, you dropped them off at 7:30am and now its 5pm and you're stuck in London. You're phoning your parents who live an hour away because they'll only be an hour whereas you are likely to be more than 2 hours. You then miraculously get on the most overcrowded train you've ever seen and you will out of Waterloo and then stop for another 30 minutes. All the time thinking I've got to collect my child. In these instances I care only about getting home for my child and not about a person who jumped in front of or was pushed in front of a train. I wouldn't make comments about jumpers but I am furious with them for disrupting me in this way. I do feel compassion but at the same time I need to get home and that is my overwhelming concern.

Some people are just so wrapped up in themselves and their own little world. It's horrid when you stop and think of the fall out that death will have caused such as the driver, the people who have to recover the body, the poor family receiving the shitty news etc.

But why does one persons tragedy have to be more important than another's? What about the parent who is facing the equivalent of a week's wages in overtime nursery fees because they're late, which will mean deciding whether to keep a roof over their heads, or eating that week. Or the parent who has been threatened by their ex that if they are late for contact one more time that they won't see their child? Or someone rushing to see a parent/sibling/friend who is dying? Or the person who might lose their job because of being late? Someone who's been waiting months to get their child a specialist appointment and will now miss it and have to wait another six months? Someone who's been unemployed for a year going to a job interview? You have NO idea what is going on in someone's life. It is possible to have sympathy for the person who has killed themselves, the family, the emergency workers and the train driver whilst also thinking "fuck, now I'm screwed" because of the delay. They're not mutually exclusive.

international I take nothing back! If you read what I posted then you would see the 'brat' I referred to was a kid playing chicken... Jumping out in front if overground tube train drivers for FUN!! Then hiding and laughing whilst we are feeling around to see if the train 'got him' cos the driver is too distraught to know what happened!!!

badlad is that why suicide forest is used? I have seen YouTube videos on the place, so so sad

That is part of it, but jumping in front of trains is still a very common way of doing it.

The last time I was delayed, I read about the suicide the next day. A couple of women standing on the platform were injured by flying body parts. Awful.

Sometimes you hear of people jumping off buildings only to land on, and injure, an unfortunate passer by.

Still, I can't imagine how livid I would be with some suited executive from the train company coming round with a demand for money after a family member had committed suicide, unreasonable behaviour or not.

It would be interesting to know how many posters on this thread have been witness/linked to a suicide and whether it changes your perception?

After witnessing a suicide and having a parent commit suicide, I find I was very angry at first. That's now dulled a bit, but it still rears it's head from time to time. It's hard to keep those feelings in check sometimes, especially when I hear people with no actual experience of it, giving their pseudo analysis of what's happened.

It's an emotion which I imagine varies for everyone and commuter wise, I think you're hearing their gut reaction at the time which may change after time.

I once heard a commuter complain as a girl was raped on the train and the train had been stopped so police could investigate. He felt my wrath.

I agree with both sides . And that is because I am a rational human and have experience of lots of things. The worry about how/when I will get home, frustration at the delay, empathy for the driver, sorrow for the family of the soul who has died, grief for another human being who has got to such a bad place that this was their decision. Am not expressing these emotions as well as PP who have put both views.

But most importantly, the presence on one expressed emotion (anger or frustration) does not mean the absence of other emotions.

And with the British-stiff-upper-lip-gallows "humour" combined with the weird (and horrible imo) "rules of commuting" means that people will not sit there wailing and beating their chests in empathy as they face a 3 hour wait. It maybe one of the things they feel. But they will not express it. They will share a wry smile with a fellow commuter and say in some ways the "safest" non-emotional/stiff upper-lippy type thing. Some may take that too far. But it does not mean they cannot/do not feel empathy.

Hi Soul sister. Full apologies in regards to my comment. I took your post out of context.

What a brave career you have. I could never do. I'd be crying myself to sleep and having nightmares every night. xx

It's funny that someone who is in the grip of a mental illness so severe that they are willing to take their own life in pretty much the most foolproof way possible, isn't thinking about the needs of commuters. How inconsiderate and attention seeking.

My mum used to be hours late home from her commute regularly because of jumpers. Eventually you do think 'FFS not again' not because you have no ompassion, or don't care, just because it happens so often

Another Londoner here - I don't commute to work, but do use the Tube and overground a lot. These incidents are incredibly frequent and, I think, becoming more so - over the summer I've heard about one at least every couple of days on the local news/travel. DP has arrived home late several times in the past few weeks because of a 'jumper.'

As a lifelong Londoner, I do think there is something about encountering this regularly that desensitises you. I'm as sensitive as they come (too much so a lot of the time!) but you do tend to end up thinking 'another one?' rather than thinking about that person as an individual. Most of my commuting friends would be the same. Not saying it's a good thing, but it does become routine, and unless you actually witness it you're distanced from the immediate tragedy of what happened. Have never felt actively angry at the person, though admittedly my first thoughts are with the driver and the victims's family. I think, unfortunately, there is an element of 'survival of the fittest' about being a daily commuter which does harden you a bit. Listening to the wry comments of many Tube staff when this has happened ('Sorry folks, looks like we've got another jumper') seems to bear this out.

What FishFingers said. I feel very sorry for the poor person who, last night, felt that their only option was to jump in front of a train. I cannot even comprend how their family felt on hearing the news (well, I can a little) and the poor train driver.
However, my vocalisation was all "self, self, self". There is absolutely nothing I could do for or about the man/woman who has died, their family or the driver. What I could do is try and figure out a way, whilst moaning admittedly, to get my exhausted, ill mother from her house to mine (6hr train journey) as quickly as possible, with a badly sprained ankle that makes driving long distances agonisingly painful.

I used to work in customer relations for a train company in the London area (I won't say who for fear of being flamed! They're not very popular...). People often called up asking why there was disruption on the line. When I told them it was a fatality responses tended to veer between the pragmatic "oh how awful/frustrating, well can you tell me how long the delay will be or suggest an alternative route" and the rather less compassionate "so? Why does that affect me? Just move the body and get on with things..." At which point I would often just tell them about the need for police and coroner to attend the scene and that when a person is hit by a high speed train there often isn't just "a body" to move. That usually shut them up (waits for someone to have a go at me because "that's not customer service". I'd normally use these tactics to get someone to just stop shouting at me so I actually can help them).

I did once receive a beautiful letter from the aunt of a young man who killed himself at one of our stations. She wanted it to be passed to the driver of the train that hit him. I had to shut myself in the loo for a little cry after reading it. I forwarded to the team manager for drivers in that part of the network but I don't know if it made it to the driver him/herself. I hope it did.

I know at Beachy Head there are signs advertising the Samaritans and I gather there are crisis intervention patrols there to help people considering jumping. I've often thought that could be useful at stations, particularly those that seem to be regular spots for fatalities.

there are crisis intervention patrols there to help people considering jumping

That was poorly worded. For clarity, I don't mean they help people jump! I mean they talk them down from their crisis and prevent them from jumping.

But yes People don't understand that suicide is not committed by those in their right mind.

A few people have posted things that indicate they believe this, but it really isn't true in every case of suicide.

This is a subject that has obviously touched a lot of people, and understandably we all come to a discussion about it firmly influenced by our own experience. But our own experience is only that, and while some people will have had mental illness that led to their suicide, many people that have chosen to end their lives were very much 'in their right mind'.

I think of the last lady I knew who took her own life. She was an amazingly brave, selfless and incredibly intelligent person. She had a degenerative physical illness that she knew was getting worse, and she made a perfectly rational an conscious decision to end her life one New Year's Eve, because she knew that the state her body was likely to be in at some point in the next year was something she didn't want to experience. I object to people saying that everyone who commits suicide is mentally ill and not thinking straight, because that is not my experience, although I can still see that it will have been that way in many other people's experiences.

I think that when we have such a personal experience of something that we want to discuss, we need to make even more effort to open our minds to see that not everyone's experience of the same thing will be the same.

I know at Beachy Head there are signs advertising the Samaritans and I gather there are crisis intervention patrols there to help people considering jumping. I've often thought that could be useful at stations, particularly those that seem to be regular spots for fatalities.

British Rail and the Samaritans have tried to address this, but obviously there is always more that can be done. In places where jumping in front of a train is common, you do usually see adverts for the Samaritans with their phone number. They are often found on the top level of multi storey car parks as well.

I agree with Dackyduckles post on page 1.
When you work in London, this is an all too regular occurrence. I also feel for the train drivers and the passengers who might be aware of it. Traumatic and awful.

Another fine display of emotional incontinence from some posters - if someone has jumped under a train and ruined your day, it's of no use to them or their family for you to start ululating in grief on the station. It's of no more relevance to you than all the other thousands of people you never met or heard of who died at the same moment around the world.
It's far more natural and healthy to be concerned with your own family and friends, and your own priorities, than to wail about something you can't fix or change and have no connection with.

Honestly? I think its not so much desensitising, or selfishness, but a coping mechanism. You can't cry for every person who this happens to, or you'd never stop crying.

Agree with those who say its a gallows type humour - very british way of coping with something horrible. And I say that as someone who lost a member of my close family under a train in London two years ago. I don't expect others to be particularly sympathetic - they didn't know him, so why would they?

I had a flatmate who did this. I hadn't known her long. But I am afraid the devastation she caused made me angry rather than sympathetic. The train driver never worked again, as far as I know, her flatmates suffered huge huge guilt that no one had recognised the state she was in, especially her best friend whom it almost destroyed. Her parents were devastated, and blamed us for not stopping her. It was a heartbreaking scenario for a wide range of people.

To make it worse she didn't die immediately, and her loved ones had to see her in the condition she was in. After being hit by a train. You can imagine what she looked like.

That was a first hand experience from my pov. I should imagine the image fucked up a lot of people, not just the train driver.