Quote:
Originally Posted by James Howard
Fair enough, the lack of information (and people not familiarising themselves) on how to contact Irish Rail is a big factor. But from where I'm sitting on an ICR right now, there is no information visible. Any information on how to use emergency equipment tends to put a lot of emphasis on penalties for mis-use which would tend to put a lot of people off.
You can't put this down to apathy - several people did ring the guards so it wasn't a question of being passive. For some reason people either didn't know to pull the cord, they didn't feel it worthwhile or they were afraid to. Another possibility is that people thought that it would be better not to alert the driver in case he stopped the train and the guys then tried to do a runner.
The only thing I am blaming Irish Rail for is the failure to provide any form of security on trains and for allowing the situation to persist where low-level anti-social behaviour is allowed to continue unchallenged. This has a tendency to develop into incidents like we've seen this week and ultimately, somebody is going to get seriously injured or killed as a result of it. It is not reasonable to expect a ticket collector to go in and stop a fight but it is reasonable to expect some effort made to keep headbangers off trains and for Irish Rail staff to monitor what is going on and arrange to remove people from trains if they are annoying other passengers. None of this is new - I only ever took the old 1817 train to Longford once, because it was a very scary place to be the only person in a carriage after Maynooth aside from a nutter with a 2-litre of Linden Village.
In terms of defending yourself with a fire extinguisher, you are generally Ok if you used something that was to hand as a weapon so long as you could reasonably be expected to have the item to hand. So if you had a sword, that is not cool but if you used a walking stick, that is Ok.
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James,
Since time immemorial there has always been an emergency chord on a train. If people could figure out how to use that on 50 years ago on cravens/park royal sets, they should certainly be able to figure it out on an ICR. That no one pulled it is frankly staggering.
As for the safety information, there are announcements after each stop telling you to familiarise yourself with the safety information at the end of each coach. Have you?
As for staffing, are you seriously expecting every DART and commuter train to have staff on them, particularly given virtually every station now has a ticket machine? That would only mean extra cost which would mean even higher fares. Realistically, how often does anything like this ever happen?
We do need to put a bit of perspective here. Yes, we've had two serious incidents, which need to be dealt with, and I'm certainly not diminishing the incidents in any way shape or form, but when did anything like that happen before?
I'd be more concerned that as a society we aren't doing enough to combat the general issue of drug addiction - that's the root cause of all of this.