Originally Posted by RichardInSF
This happens a few times a year on Caltrain (San Jose, CA to SF, CA). And of course it is a VERY regular occurrence in Tokyo where I am right now -- so regular, in fact, that the railroad companies bill the families for the delay costs in an attempt to prevent it. The hypothesis is that in Japan, where families are very important, no one would want to put their family deeply in debt as part of a suicide. The hypothesis has been proven wrong many, many times, almost on a daily basis.
Actually, the railroad companies
don't bill the families for the delay, but they don't dispute the rumor because it just might mean less people doing it.
Still, if you're going to kill yourself in an obnoxious way (imagine the poor guy cleaning up your mess), at least jumping in front of a train is fairly unlikely to hurt anybody. The other Japanese pastime of jumping off buildings, on the other hand, is all too likely to kill somebody else too... there was a case where some guy landed on two secretaries, killing them both but surviving himself. He did get quadriplegia though, so I hope he had a long and painful life.
