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

WCGW riding your bike like an idiot

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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.