The video quickly went viral in June: a group of people dashing across the roof of a moving New York
City J train. Captured from far off, the train can be seen about to
cross the Williamsburg Bridge, with its 135-foot drop to the East River –
yet the daredevils, dressed in black, leap from car to car.
A similar stunt resulted in a far more horrifying clip less than two weeks later, when a 15-year-old boy suffered a severe head injury
while riding on top of a 7 train in Queens. Footage reviewed by the
Guardian showed first responders hoisting the profusely bleeding teen
off the roof and laying him on the floor with part of his skull
separated.
On Monday, another 15-year-old boy in Queens tried to climb on to the roof of an R train with three friends, only to have his arm severed when he fell on to the tracks and the train ran him over, according to reports.
New
Yorkers call it “subway surfing”: a stunt riders have attempted and
died from since the transit system’s earliest days, but which has
returned as a disturbing trend over the last year among young men and
teenage boys who often post the clips online.
According
to statistics provided by the Metropolitan Transit Authority, there
have already been 627 incidents of people riding outside of trains
between January and July this year – up from 96 incidents during the
same period last year.
Ken,
a Brooklyn resident, told the Guardian he was on an M train last week
departing Manhattan’s Delancey-Essex station when a group of about eight
boys wearing backpacks, some of whom looked as young as 12, boarded and
began “hyping each other up”. Then they used the railings between the
subway cars to climb on to the roof as the train chugged over the
Williamsburg Bridge.
“Full speed going over the
Williamsburg Bridge, we could hear footsteps on top. At times they were
running,” he said. “I was quite concerned, obviously: if someone slips
and falls, it’s game over.”
Ken said it was
“sad seeing their careless attitude toward life, succumbing to peer
pressure and doing these incredibly dumb actions.”
A
New Yorker in his late 30s called D-Side told the Guardian he had
started subway surfing with his friends as a teenager, after he missed
his uptown 6 train one day and decided to grab on to the back. The
experience was “a rush unlike anything else” and even addicting. “It’s a
good feeling, even though it’s completely meaningless. Why does someone
skydive? Why does someone use drugs? They like what it makes them feel.
And then they keep chasing that over and over again.”
Then
tragedy struck D-Side’s best friend, Alex Nasad, a graffiti artist who
went by Drone. He was killed in 2002 while he was train surfing an
uptown 1 train and apparently hit a support beam. “I think he was just
shit-faced drunk. It was like: ‘Oh shit, look, I could go get a rush.’”
‘Full speed going over the Williamsburg Bridge, we could hear footsteps on top,’ Ken said. Photograph: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images
D-Side
swore off train surfing after Nasad’s death. “A lot of people I know
who I told this to are dead right now. So I don’t have clearcut answers
to how we stop people from doing this.”
The act
of train surfing dates back more than a century in New York City. Local
newspaper archives mention people getting maimed or killed riding on
top of trains as early as 1904 – the year the subway opened – when two
boys, 13 and 14, were struck by a low bridge while riding on top of a
Grand Central-bound railcar, killing one of them and injuring the other.
One thing seems constant throughout the decades: the victims are young,
male and impulsive. As a 1991 story in the New York Times about subway
surfing put it, the “risk is the lure”.
In 2016, a 25-year-old Instagram star was killed
while trying to subway surf in Brooklyn, while apparently intoxicated. A
Bronx subway surfer in his 30s was killed in 2017 after falling off and
getting run over. In 2018, a 24-year-old man was electrocuted
after standing on top of a commuter train following a Yankees game. In
2019, a 14-year-old boy named Eric Rivera was killed while surfing a 7
train. “I can’t believe that you would risk your life to do that,” his
mother told the local outlet the City at the time. “What’s the joy of it, what’s the fun of it? I don’t see it.” Last October, a 32-year-old man was killed while subway surfing when he fell on to the tracks and was run over by the J train.
There
may be few more familiar with the stunt’s consequences than the doctors
who treat its victims. A physician at a major trauma hospital in New
York who asked to remain anonymous recalled treating a train surfer who
had gruesome head injuries. Other physicians at the hospital were
“pretty judgy” about the victim, the physician said. “The usual response
is, ‘Wow, what a stupid thing to do.’
“That’s
what emergency care is for, I guess,” the physician added. “People live
their crazy lives and we’ll always be here to witness it.”
The
MTA’s chief safety and security officer, Patrick Warren, said in an
emailed statement: “Riding outside of subway cars is reckless and
extremely dangerous. This behavior can result in awful consequences, as
it likely has for the young man who was severely injured on Monday.” The
MTA’s fine for riding outside of the train is $75.
New York’s train surfing casualties mirror a growing global trend of injuries and deaths
from social media-related stunts, as app algorithms reward users for
producing extreme content, sometimes as part of viral “challenges”.
D-Side believes the return of train surfing is “100%” correlated to
social media usage, which has intensified people’s craving for
attention. “It’s a hive mind. People chase clout. They care about other
people’s opinions. They care about being somebody making a name for
themselves. It breeds people wanting things right now.”
Today
he’s a father who no longer chases adrenaline. “The thrill I seek now
is just watching my kids grow,” he said. “Honestly, I feel lucky to be
here.”
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