Subway barriers are in use in Toulouse, where they help with noise and air quality. It’s unlikely they’ll be installed here anytime soon: they cost $10 million per station, and the TTC can barely pay for its current capital projects (Image: courtesy of KABA Group)
Seventeen people jumped in the first five months of this year. (The number of these who died hasn’t been released.) The majority of jumpers die from massive head or chest trauma from the impact of the subway trains, which weigh more than 200 metric tonnes. Other victims are electrocuted by the third rail, which delivers 600 volts of current to power the trains. Depending on your position on the platform and your relation to the train when you jump, you are either run over, tossed along the tracks or pulled underneath the cars and dragged. Siobhan Carlin, a former TTC medic, arrived at suicides that reminded her of smashed watermelons.
If a body is trapped under the subway, freeing it can be difficult. Sometimes a TTC supervisor is recruited to move a train or uncouple cars so that paramedics can get access to bodies. The dead are zipped into body bags and stored in a utility room located off the platform; they are guarded by a police officer until the coroner arrives. On average, it takes more than an hour for a jumper to be treated or removed and for the track and platform to be cleaned up before the trains can start running again.
Survivors of subway suicide attempts often say they chose the method because they believed it would be a fast and certain death. In fact, in Toronto, only 60 per cent of people who try to kill themselves this way die. Last year, 14 of the 18 people who jumped died. Those who live suffer devastating injuries: organs are destroyed, limbs are amputated or crushed, and hemorrhaging is extensive. “When a subway suicide comes in to the hospital, they are covered in grease and brake dust,” says Robin Richards, an orthopedics specialist and surgeon-in-chief at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. “It’s a big zone of injury because of the nature of the impact and the width of the wheels. There aren’t clean cuts. And if they survive, they’re left with brain damage, chronic pain or deformities.”
Subway jumpers are relatively rare—they constitute only about four per cent of the city’s 250 suicides each year—yet they inspire a disproportionate fascination. Since the subway opened in 1954, there have been 1,200 of what the TTC refers to as “suicide incidents” (both attempts and deaths) on the system; the first death occurred seven months after the trains started running. The descent underground and the confined space of the subway can have a vertigo effect that’s heightened by the speed and noise of the trains. Drivers say it’s common for people to tease the trains by standing as close to the edge of the platform as possible, while others hug the walls as subways approach.
Barriers, which span the length of the platform and have doors that are synchronized to open when the train is stopped, are in use on subway systems in London, Paris, Toulouse, Hong Kong and throughout China, where they’re now mandatory. They help with noise and air quality and keep trash off the tracks, where it can catch fire. (This is a major issue in Toronto: 100 bags of garbage are cleared from the tracks each day, and there were 125 track-level fires in 2009.) Their main purpose, of course, is to prevent people from falling, being pushed or jumping. In March, the TTC recommended installing floor-to-ceiling barriers, but it can barely pay for current capital projects, and the new barriers would cost an estimated $10 million per station. Another obstacle is that the barriers require trains to be run by an automated signalling system. (No matter how skilled an operator is, it’s difficult to manually stop a train so its doors line up with platform doors at each station.) The TTC doesn’t plan to begin installing the automated system until sometime next year.
The barrier proposal has opened a bigger, thornier debate about the nature of suicide itself, how we talk about it and what we can do to prevent it. The argument against spending money on subway barriers or other prevention methods, like bridge guard rails, is the widely accepted belief that people determined to kill themselves will find a way—any way—to do so. But suicidologists and mental health experts say a significant number of people who are prevented from committing suicide won’t try again.
This is the laughable thing about the “jumper fence” on the Bloor Street Bridge. People will just find somewhere else to end it all.
August 10, 2010 at 9:07 am | by JayOf course Jay, that’s the spirit! Ahh, gotta love the defeatist approach.
Maybe they WILL find somewhere else to do it that won’t traumatize a guy who’s trying to do his job and has to sleep at night?
How awful would you feel being the guy driving the train…?
Let me guess, you’re probably the guy who would be all up in arms if his kid tripped or was pushed from the ledge. THEN you’d be pointing all kinds of fingers and talking about barricades, right?
I say put up the barricade and take away the readily available option of people making a spectacle of themselves on the worst possible stage.
August 10, 2010 at 10:47 am | by AnthonyThis is heart wrenching. I never knew the name of the TTC driver, but I’ve been praying for him ever since I heard of this tragedy. I will now pray for him and his wife by name.
August 10, 2010 at 1:18 pm | by ChristineCan you let David rest in peace, and stop using his suicide to sell your crap?
August 10, 2010 at 5:27 pm | by aq4we0tuerepeople who kill themselves don’t care what other people think or feel, that’s why they kill themselves. they don’t care what their family, friends or colleagues think – they only care about ending their own pain.
August 10, 2010 at 6:34 pm | by brendawhy can’t drivers slow down before they hit the platform and chug along until the end instead of barreling all the way to the other end? i’m sure the time delay is a “wash” since the whole system wouldn’t have to be shut down for hours after a collision.
August 12, 2010 at 8:38 am | by JulieBrenda obviously hasn’t had to console anybody suicidal.
August 12, 2010 at 9:55 am | by etienneJulie is correct!
August 12, 2010 at 10:36 am | by MichaelIf someone is suicidal, they will find a way to do it. Building barricades is a waste of money,(Danforth Bridge) use the dollars for programs to help prevent suicides and help people with depression. The TTC subway system is ridiculous, one issue, the whole system shuts down.
Build more subway routes, not streetcars!
Unless you have been victimized by a completed suicide, you don’t know.
Our Mental Health system is like a maze. We need to go back and see how suicidal people can be helped.
Talk to Survivors Support Program, Karen runs it. Perhaps if the experts are asked, the City will have better, accessible ways of dealing with it.
Just my thoughts as someone who has worked with the families of people who have committed suicide by any way or means.
Colleen
August 12, 2010 at 1:51 pm | by Colleenthe suicide barrier on the bloor bridge isn’t to prevent suicides, it’s to prevent jumpers from landing on the dvp.
August 12, 2010 at 4:18 pm | by adamJay, you didn’t read the article at all. Either that or you’re illiterate.
August 12, 2010 at 10:00 pm | by MarcyJULIE is right .THEY HAVE TO SLOWDOWN BEFORE THE HIT THE PLATAFORM AND YOU CAN KILL YOURSELF THERE.
GEORGE.
August 12, 2010 at 11:11 pm | by georgeJULIE is right .THEY HAVE TO SLOWDOWN BEFORE THE HIT THE PLATFORM AND YOU CAN NOT KILL YOURSELF THERE.
GEORGE.
August 12, 2010 at 11:12 pm | by georgeThis could have the makings of a successful reality show. Howie Mandel washing his hands in a portable sink on the platform yelling “have you got what it takes to make that LEAP OF FAITH.” You really have to love the attempts by the media to publish somber, caring stories about this issue. A little late isn’t it when the visceral, opportunistic, hit-em-between-the-eyes negative tsunami they bombard everyone with, is guaranteed to be a factor at work here. There’s bound to be a lot of people out there who just can’t take a never-ending gloom and despair pounding. Everything’s screwed…. the future sucks…. your country is falling apart….. the economy is bust….the cops are crooks…..the politicians are even worse….. That does it !!!! …..where’s the bridge ????? Take Me To The Bridge. This (society)is SO screwed-up, for every person who jumps, there must be another 10,000 giving it serious consideration.
August 13, 2010 at 9:29 am | by splatter-manI’d witnessed a TTC suicide “jump” myself. I (along with a couple of other people) was standing 10 feet away from the jumper, when it happened. I still remember all of it to this day, and it happened back in 1997!! It’s a horrific thing to see. I feel sad for the vehicle operators and others affected by such a tragedy.
August 15, 2010 at 3:54 pm | by pmb