Rail suicide

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Rail suicide is deliberate self-harm resulting in death by means of a moving rail vehicle.^[1] The suicide occurs when an approaching train hits a suicidal pedestrian jumping onto, lying down on, or wandering or standing on the tracks.^[2] Low friction on the tracks usually makes it impossible for the train to stop quickly enough. On urban mass transit rail systems that use a high-voltage electrified third rail, the suicide may also touch or be otherwise drawn into contact with it, adding electrocution to the cause of death.

Unlike other methods, rail suicide often has widespread effects. Trains must be rerouted temporarily to clean the tracks and investigate the fatality, causing delays for passengers and crews that may extend far beyond the site of the fatality, a costly economic inconvenience. Train drivers in particular, effectively forced into being accomplices to the suicide they witness, often suffer post-traumatic stress disorder that has adversely affected their personal lives and careers.^[3] In recent years railways and their unions have been offering more support to afflicted drivers.

Research into the demographics of rail suicide has shown that most are male and have diagnosed mental illness, to a greater extent than suicides in general. The correlation of rail suicide and mental illness has led to some sites along rail lines near mental hospitals becoming rail suicide hotspots; some researchers have recommended that no such facilities be located within walking distance of stations. Within the developed world, The Netherlands and Germany have high rates of rail suicide while the U.S. and Canada have the lowest rates. While suicides on urban mass transit usually take place at stations, on conventional rail systems they are generally split almost evenly between stations, level crossings and the open stretches of track between them.

Prevention efforts have generally focused on suicide in general, on the grounds that not much can be done at tracks themselves, since suicides are believed to be determined enough to overcome most efforts to keep them from the tracks. Rail-specific means of prevention have included platform screen doors, which has been highly successful at reducing suicide on some urban mass transit systems, calming lights, and putting signs with suicide hotline numbers at sites likely to be used. Some rail networks have also trained their staff to watch, either in person or remotely, for behavioural indicators of a possible suicide attempt and intervene before it happens. Media organisations have also been advised to be circumspect in reporting some details of a rail suicide in order to avoid copycat suicides, such as those that happened after German football star Robert Enke took his own life on the tracks in 2009, a suicide widely covered in European media.