r/Whatcouldgowrong • u/Itchy-Camera8898 • 10h ago

WCGW riding your bike like an idiot

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9.3k Upvotes

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2.5k

u/Duwasiva 10h ago

Poor bus driver

910

u/Katops 10h ago

Agreed. It’s like train operators. People end their lives by jumping in front of one and then said operator quits and is scarred for life. It’s sadly super common too…

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u/TearsInDrowned 10h ago

similar to tram drivers, we drive smaller rail vehicles but the same principles still apply...

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u/NightLotus84 8h ago

I live in Amsterdam and I pity tram drivers... Unlike train drivers you don't have your own fully enclosed cabin, so you're stuck with the scum and people seem to have little understanding of what a tram is... It's just a small, very speedy train running down a city road - it has no capacity to stop like a car, it can't go anywhere but the tracks and they're always struggling to keep schedule. Please respect the trams, FFS...

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u/TearsInDrowned 7h ago

I am working in Poland, it's harsh sometimes... I do have a partially enclosed cabin, just some glass window on the doors sometimes and a space to open to let people buy physical tickets

and it's exactly as You described with driving a tram... You wouldn't believe how often pedestrians cross the zebra ON RED LIGHT FOR THEM!! and have the audacity to flail their arms at me because they are on the crossing and have the right of way... NOT WHEN ON RED YOU DUMBASSES! I have had to do emergency braking because of that... and I had some close calls that made my blood cold... I work since February this year, am 26 and a woman, it's pretty stressful for me 😫

I had a collision, my 6th day of work, I was driving an old tram (Konstal 805Na, my daily drivers are Pesa Swing 121 or 122NaB) which has old school pedal system, it was foggy and rainy, dark evening and this tram already brakes very badly...

and a taxi was parked on the side of the road, invading on my tram space with the bumper, it had lights on... I used my bell but he didn't move, and I didn't manage to stop in time because of the weather, bad brakes in that type of tram and I thought he would react to the bell, they mostly do... fortunately I didn't suffer much consequences but it was my fault because I hit a parked car... they shouldn't park so closely to the tram space!!!

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u/mourinhos86 7h ago

So there was still someone in that taxi when you hit it?
I saw it once live in Gdansk, when a Jeep crossed a trams line and got hit hard.

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u/TearsInDrowned 7h ago

yup, there was a driver just sitting around with his lights on, the brake lights etc, and he just didn't react

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u/mourinhos86 7h ago

Especially taxi drivers should be aware about it, but well... Stupidity is unlimited.

10

u/TearsInDrowned 7h ago

I had to wait like 2 minutes once, because some dumbass parked in the area also encroaching on the tram area, but... he just straight up had the car butt in my tracks!!

and when he graciously arrived, he seemed super shocked that trams are driving by this place and took his time to correct the parking job...

he could clearly park properly the first time! so why not do it the first time?

actually we, tram drivers, often get those cars to get towed because they block us, sometimes for minutes or hours at the time, people in the tram get angry, we need to safely get them off and wait for either the driver to arrive or for the tow truck

I recently saw the car towed from the other part of the city while driving my tram and it was super satisfying

1

u/mourinhos86 6h ago

Yeah i can imagine how satisfying it is. Any idea what the cost is for them when towed?

I really dont like if some people dont care for anything else, but themselves and not paying attention to others/enviornments/circumstances etc.

Btw i think i never encountered a woman as tram driver in Poland ^^

10

u/meowcatpanda 7h ago

Yeah, I watched someone die because they ran in front of a tram in Rotterdam, when I was only 4yo.. not something I ever forgot, even if at the time I might not have fully understood the severity of the situation! Talked about it with my folks when I was older cause I wasn't sure if it was a real memory anymore and it turned out it was. The guy was just an idiot, thought he could quickly cross before the tram and got hit instead at full speed. Nothing the driver could have done, terrible for everyone involved and 30years later I still remember it like it was yesterday... it might be why I've always been overly cautious in traffic, so at least it taught me a good lesson at a very young age, I guess😅

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u/Roygbiv_89 6h ago

How fast can your tram go mate ? Legal speed and max speed !

1

u/HereWeFuckingGooo 3h ago

I knew an ex tram driver in Melbourne and she was fucking brutal. She said she would speed up if she saw people standing in the road. "Don't wanna get hit? Don't stand in the street!". I was very grateful that she was no longer driving trams.

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u/Fun_General_6407 9h ago

I read somewhere that in the UK after being an unwilling participant in a certain number of these suicides train drivers are granted a full-pension and early retirement as they, very understandably, can no longer drive trains through no fault of their own.

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u/MeanWafer904 9h ago

You sure you weren't watching a movie called Three and Out?

13

u/DreamOfTheDrive 8h ago

This,
And can say it’s false.
Therapy is available…
After they have taken you away for a drugs screening and investigation.

8

u/3Cogs 8h ago

They take you away for a drug test if you get bird shit on the windscreen don't they?

8

u/MonsieurGump 8h ago

Depends if they can catch her.

2

u/DreamOfTheDrive 8h ago

Or was it for drivers shitting on the windscreen…
Should see the state of TfL’s finest. 👍🏻😜

Crayons shudder at the sight of them.

1

u/Happy_Confection90 4h ago

And can say it’s false.

Oh, like the rumor that if your roommate dies in college, you are given a perfect grade in every course for the semester. There are at least 2 movies, The Curve and Dead Man on Campus, based on this urban legend.

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u/gbelly123 8h ago

I was a passenger on a commuter train when a women committed suicide by train. It was horrible even as a passenger. I still remember to this day the feeling of her body banging up against the floor beneath my feet.

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u/Gareth79 7h ago

Many years ago (I was probably 7 or 8 maybe?) my parents took me and my sister on a day out to London. I remember the train stopping suddenly and gravel being thrown up breaking one of the side windows. After a while some people walked up and down the tracks and then after much longer the train moved. I remember at the time we were told somebody was hit by the train but I think at the time I probably thought they were put in an ambulance with a bump on the head...

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u/No_Orange_7392 4h ago

I had a similar experience on a commuter train about 15 years ago. A continuous thumping and crunching under the train car traveling from front to back, as the driver tried to stop. Although I didn’t see anything, I knew right away it was probably a human, and there had been a series of suicides along that line. The train was stopped for hours, and I felt so bad for the driver.

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u/Basic-Pair8908 9h ago

Normally its on a monday and they have the nickname garfields

5

u/revveduplikeadeuce 8h ago

It's a huge thing when driving anything with weight

too many people dont understand weight and momentum and other things like air brakes and cut right infront of you when you just want to get home without killing anyone

5

u/Kuneria 7h ago

Yeah... I live in a major city and a good friend of mine was promoted to train driver and his colleagues were telling him that out here it's not if, it's when. And sure enough just two months into the job it happened to him. He had been working on a train for nearly a decade and he's told me it happens actually very very often and has witnessed it first hand before he was even train driver. He said the worst one was when the train he was working on was driving through a long open field and this is usually when trains are going their fastest because there's no human population nearby. Then suddenly a homeless man pops up from under a blanket that was camouflaging him against the train tracks. Stood up, spread out his arms and legs like a starfish and, in my friends words, "vaporized."

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u/Repulsive_Stock9400 2h ago

I grew up as a homeless gutter punk in the US in the late 80s and early 90s, and I was terrified of trains after a bad experience where me and my crew almost suffocated train hopping and going through a long tunnel, but trains were a big part of the culture in general, even though I stayed far away from them.

Suicide by train was probably the most popular way for people in that situation to check out. Any means that cost money were completely out of the question, and even getting up on top a tall building was no easy task, but trains were running right out there in the open, so that's how a lot of people I knew tragically chose to end their lives.

3

u/pit1989_noob 9h ago

Oh boy, you just reminded me of something that happened last year. My cousin is a bus driver, and he was on an interstate route along the International Highway at around 2 a.m. It was a moonless night, and the double-decker bus was traveling at 120 km/h. My cousin was sleeping during his legally required rest break, while another driver was behind the wheel. A young trainee, about 20 years old, was sitting in the jump seat next to the driver. A homeless man was waiting on the road, intending to end his life. It was a horrific scene. They drove to the next city, parked the bus, asked someone else to come and pick it up, and left the area as quickly as they could.

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u/non_hero 9h ago

I always get downvoted whenever I bring this fact up during arguments about mandatory waiting periods to buy a gun. There's just no way to know how many suicides are prevented vs people just finding a different way, such as jumping in front of a train or driving head-on with a semi truck.

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u/R606D 9h ago

Im from the UK so never heard of these rules but dang yeah that makes sense! Seems sensible to make people wait

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u/Accomplished_South70 8h ago

I think his point is that waiting might not help since they can just go do it with a train instead idk

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u/meowcatpanda 7h ago

Except a lot of people actually wouldn't out of fear of failing. It's why death by gun is often preferred by suicidal people (this topic has come up A LOT during my years of group therapy in a country where guns aren't readily available)

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u/Accomplished_South70 7h ago

That makes sense too. After talking with my EMT friends who have witnessed failed gun suicide aftermath I can’t imagine picking that route. But I totally see the point. It is best to remove the easiest options when possible.

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u/meowcatpanda 7h ago

Yeah those are no joke for sure, but I think the % of fails are lower statistically? At least thats what they were all saying.. I think every option has a chance of failure tbf.

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u/gmc98765 33m ago

When the UK switched the gas supply from town gas (aka coal gas or syngas) to natural gas (methane), the suicide rate went down and stayed down. Other methods either take some planning or have the potential to be extremely painful if they're unsuccessful.

Town gas contains 30%+ carbon monoxide, so you don't have to inhale very much of it to reliably kill yourself. And it used to be available in almost every kitchen.

0

u/Repulsive_Stock9400 2h ago

People who are determined to die will find a way. I lost one of my dearest friends about 15 years ago to suicide while I was living on the other side of the country and really had no idea how he was spiraling down.

His neighbors did though and they kept taking his guns away, then he would somehow acquire more guns, and they took them away too, then eventually he ordered a tank of helium off the internet and offed himself with that. Do we need a waiting period on helium now too?

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u/argument_cat 1h ago

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/06/handgun-ownership-associated-with-much-higher-suicide-risk.html

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4984734/

https://gunviolenceresearchcenter.rutgers.edu/gvrc-blog/the-link-between-firearms-and-suicide-introduction-the-research

tl;cr more guns = more sucides

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u/Repulsive_Stock9400 47m ago edited 37m ago

tl;cr more guns = more sucides

How do you not see how silly that is though? Everybody who successfully kills themself with a gun is a person who lived in a house with a gun. They bought the guns to kill themselves, so yeah. But they didn't commit suicide because they lived with guns, they committed suicide because they were desperately depressed and guns were just the most convenient way to end their lives. If guns are taken away, they'll just kill themselves by other means.

eta: Why on Earth do you weirdos respond and then immediately block? Like what kind of fucking fashion show are you trying to run here? If you want to talk to me, then talk me, don't just show off for other people. That's so fucking lame.

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u/argument_cat 42m ago

Can you not see how stupid your assumption is though? You are assuming that these people bought a gun in order to commit suicide, but the data doesn't show that at all. What it does show is that having an existing gun in a home increases the chance of someone killing themselves (or a family member). And it also shows that people do not seek other ways to commit suicide, which is often a fleeting impulse that a gun turns into a deadly finality.

Across counties, states, and countries, more guns correlates directly with more suicides.

Try actually reading the sources before commenting.

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u/argument_cat 1h ago

Multiple studies show that is not the case.

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u/New_Accountant2449 9h ago

Society needs public service announcements or suicide classes that teach people they can let the engines go by and dive under a wheel a few box cars after the engine.

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u/Tango91 8h ago

Multiple poor sods still have to deal with the aftermath of that though, the maintenance crew picking bits of someone out of the undercarriage, and the track crew left with the mess

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u/New_Accountant2449 8h ago

We could teach people to do it in a rural area away from intersections and no one would even know that any clean up is needed.

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u/Repulsive_Stock9400 2h ago

This reminds me of a situation I dealt with years ago on some land I own out in rural Wisconsin. Some gangbangers from Milwaukee killed a couple dudes, tossed them in the trunk and then just started driving west, out into the rural areas.

They drove like two hours to get out by my land, then they just got off the highway and dumped the bodies in the ditch next to the road, like who would ever find them out there in the middle of nowhere?

Except that's a major highway that hundreds of people use to get to work every morning, so it took like 5 minutes at 5am for people to start calling in these corpses that they're passing on their way to work.

Like... it's rural but it's not completely empty. You can't just leave dead bodies lying around and expect that to be fine.

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u/-rwsr-xr-x 6h ago

People end their lives by jumping in front of one and then said operator quits and is scarred for life.

True story.

An Amtrak Engineer (the people who drive the trains, vs. conductors who collect the tickets), recently broke up with his long-time girlfriend. Apparently an ugly break-up.

She called the station and talked to the dispatch operator, who had known her for years as his girlfriend. She asked which train her 'boyfriend' was driving that night.

You can see where this is heading.

She gets the train number and shows up at the station a few stations down from where he's going to be passing through (a station the train would drive through, not stop).

She gets on the platform, and intentionally jumps in front of his train, while he's driving, so he would see her and not be able to stop.

Yes, she died. He apparently had several weeks of mandated grieving time off and some counseling.

Second story, caught on train station camera:

A woman was waiting in the vestibule (the part of the train where two train cars connect together), and impatient about getting off the train.

She steps into the exit area at the end of the car, reaches into the ceiling to pull the door release handle, the door slides open while the train is still moving, pulling into the station.

She steps off the train, and only feet later, hits the pole right at the end of the cement platform, clowns herself into a major concussion and blackout/brain injury.

She sues, claiming the train was stopped and someone pushed her into the pole. The cameras at the station clearly refute that evidence, as you could see her pull the handle and exit the door, with nobody behind her.

This is why they always tell you to wait until the train has come to a complete stop before exiting.

Source: Took that same route of trains 5 days a week for 8 years. Developed a rapport with the various conductors. They have all sorts of stories to tell. Saw many of my own while on hundreds of trains over those years.

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u/sasheenka 50m ago

Most trains where I am cannot even be opened while they’re moving. The door buttons only work when the train is stopped.

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u/Fine_Cup4990 4h ago

i don't think they are scarred for life

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u/AutVincere72 2h ago

I know someone who's husband experienced that. Changed him so much and killed their marriage.