London - One undersI once saw a woman throw herself under a train. I noticed her sitting on a bench at the platform. As a train approached and the wind picked up, she jumped down to the rails and ran towards the tunnel. People screamed and the train braked hard, but nothing could prevent two hundred tons of metal from mashing her into track pizza. Over 100 people die this way every year. Tube drivers refer to them as "
one Unders.
"
I don’t know if it’s bravado or what, but some tube drivers are like, 'Oh, I can’t wait until I get a one under,' because you can get sick leave for six months on full pay. These people aren’t fussed: There’s blood all over the front of the train, the person underneath is screaming, the police and ambulance are there, and the driver will just be sitting there reading the paper and eating their sandwiches. It doesn’t seem to have any affect.
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"The worst one under story I’ve ever heard is not embellished, because I know the bloke who was on the train. He was an instructor—my instructor when I started actually—and was in the train, but he wasn’t driving it. He was just riding in the front. A lot of the time, if the trains are packed, you’ll ride in front with the driver. He said they were on the Northern Line, going quite fast, and he’s chatting to the driver.
As they come into the platform there’s a woman, stark naked, standing in front of them in a crucifix pose. Obviously, they hit her and killed her.
At the inquest it turned out she was a schizophrenic. She’d gone to the station, stripped off, folded up all her clothes really neatly, wandered into the tunnel, and just stood there, waiting.
"Another instructor I know said he was up in Northfields really early on a Saturday morning with no one on the platform. Suddenly there was this woman there. He looked at her because she was quite good-looking.
As he got up close to her, she held her nose (like you do when you jump in the water) and jumped in front of him. He went right over her. Turns out she had mental health issues too.
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"One of the things with one unders is, when people get hit, one would assume they'd die instantly, but about half the time they don’t. People sometimes mis-time their jumps and end up in that gap under the rails. Some folks call them suicide pits because the body falls in there, but other people say that’s complete rubbish and the gap is for waste paper and litter.
A couple of nights ago an instructor told me about a one under at Heathrow. It was packed with tourists and some bloke got down and lay across the rails. He wasn’t electrocuted because his clothing probably insulated him. As you can imagine, there was absolute pandemonium. Then the train came into the station, not particularly fast, and hit the bloke. The driver is really shook up.
All of a sudden, he starts hearing noises coming from underneath and the bloke comes walking out. What had happened was the train had hit him and knocked him into the suicide pit. There’s not a mark on him. There’s always lots of police about at Heathrow and they asked him, “What are you doing?” He almost seemed embarrassed. “Oh, I’m really sorry. I’ll go home now.” They couldn’t believe it.
