
Someone in New York is pulling emergency brakes, destroying subway commute - hourislate
https://jalopnik.com/new-york-has-a-supervillain-pulling-emergency-brakes-an-1834936243
======
KaiserPro
This is interesting

I would be very surprised if this could happen in central london.

1) the tubes are packed and the cabs locked.

2) they would have be murdered by the other commuters.

3) you can't get in or out of the station without being seen on CCTV

4) each train has CCTV coverage.

5) its almost impossible to get out of the tube via the tunnels, without being
electrocuted or run over (All but the cut and cover tunnels are <1' bigger
than the trains)

For point 2, even in legitimate cases where someone has keeled over, you get
death stares. The only time its seen as acceptable is when someone falls
inbetween the gap between the train and the platform edge.

~~~
dx034
Regarding 5, emergency brakes in London won't stop the train in the tunnel.
They just send a signal to the driver to wait at the next station and inform
staff at that station and/or emergency services.

Pulling the emergency brake therefore isn't necessarily a bad idea. If someone
has fallen ill on the train (esp. common in summer), it's the best way to
ensure that help will be available as soon as possible.

As you said, evacuating trains in the tunnel is dangerous so it's only done if
trains physically can't move to the station (e.g. another train blocks the
tracks). And even then, evacuation is only done after electricity has been
switched off via the end of the train.

~~~
mprev
As for pulling the emergency brake for someone who is unwell, there are
frequent announcements on the tube telling you not to do that. The advice from
TfL is to wait until the next station and help the person get off.

~~~
mcv
I find it weird that there's so much confusion about the way emergency brakes
work and when to use them on the London Underground. If people on HN can't
agree on it, how can the general public? Confusion about this sort of thing
can be dangerous.

~~~
JaimeThompson
That is because people on HN are the general public in a lot of ways. Just
because most are specialized knowledge workers doesn't mean they are
inherently more intelligent in other areas of life.

~~~
darkpuma
Intelligence isn't the right word. There are some sort of jobs that _do_
select for high intelligence. Any sort of work that requires abstract
reasoning and novel problem solving is going to be inaccessible to people with
lower intelligence.

Rather, it should be said that tech workers are not inherently more
knowledgeable in matters unrelating to tech than the general public. In this
case, knowledge of train function and etiquette is in question, not
intelligence.

(Note also that intelligence does not confer knowledge (although it makes
knowledge easier to acquire) and that it's quite easy to find examples of
people with modest intelligence but exceptional knowledge. Furthermore the
work/intelligence selection process only really applies in one direction;
there are a lot of high intelligence people who choose jobs they find
undemanding because they have different priorities or have had different
opportunities in life.)

------
subweigh
for a stint i lived on the nyc subway system

one night i woke up flying across a subway car before slamming into one of the
vertical hand poles

i was sitting, sleeping, facing the direction of travel and someone had pulled
the emergency stop

it was 3am so the only people on the train where fellow transients

this fact must have been prominent in the mind of the person conducting the
train because immediately they got on the comm and yelled, 'WHO THE FUCK
PULLED THE EMERGENCY STOP?!'

the absurdity of it all helped me ignore the pain in my shoulder

i always slept with my back to my momentum after that night

~~~
theNJR
How many others were sleeping on the train?

If lots, how was that allowed to happen? If few, why not more?

~~~
subweigh
train? unsure, the car i was in... maybe 2 other transients?

more nyc subway information than you'll ever need:

\- nyc has a globally rare subway in that it is 24hrs

\- you need to be sitting up to sleep on the train, if you lie down you can be
removed (was so told by a cop when i was first arrested for sleeping on the
train that this is 'the law')

\- subways run the full length of a track, then back, then swap drivers

\- when a driver swaps they have to remove everyone from the train so all
transients get up and go across the track to the next train that is waiting to
drive off

\- the two longest trains: ORANGE(D,1h-1h15m before driver swap),
RED(2,1h30m-2h before driver swap)

\- meaning you could get about ~1h30m of uninterrupted sleep

\- that was until i discovered the L train is driven by software and the
conductor is there as a failsafe

\- as such there is a different driver procedure and you can run the train
back and forth all day all week without being removed, thats eventually how id
get 8h+ nights

someone down thread said 480$/mo for tickets, but id rarely pay

> why not more?

i wondered the same thing, its warm, even in winter, and heavily populated,
protecting you from assaults

im unsure what percentage of people without places to sleep choose the subway,
but there are some options

there are shelters, but after my experiences there: caging you in or out after
curfew, once shut a lawlessness among the people, being placed in rooms with
territorial long termers, structurally and hygienically questionable building;
i decided id rather risk the street

but it was a winter with a foot of snow on the ground so i tried to sleep in a
decommissioned subway stop where there were others sleeping but was woken up
by the blunt end of a cop's foot

when i explained i thought it was okay to sleep here because i saw others
doing the same the cop responded, 'that guys been there 7 years, get the fuck
out of here kid'

hostels at the time cost about 30$/nt for a bunk in a room with 40 people, in
brooklyn, so out of my price range but once i got a job i would stay in one
once a week to take a shower

> how was that allowed to happen?

compassion, human decency, empathy

i jape, though thats why, im guessing, most riders accept it as a reality

but its probably more to do with poorly handling government resources to
address the issue that some people need to sleep sitting up on a subway to
have a warm place to rest

~~~
Mirioron
I appreciate your story and hope you're doing better now. I wonder why there's
so little done about not only homelessness, but simply shelter. The homeless
don't want to get in the way of people and the people don't want the homeless
to get in their way. Yet the side with the resources doesn't seem to care to
do much about it.

~~~
ummwhat
This is the fundemental reason urban places vote for social programs
(Democrat) and rural places vote against them (Republican). Homeless people on
subways don't affect people that live on farms. The rural urban divide is
rational self interest manifested in politics.

~~~
kortilla
No, it’s not. You’ll find plenty of dirt poor rural people that would benefit
from entitlement programs just as much and they still vote Republican.

Similarly, Vermont keeps voting in Sanders despite there not being homeless
issues there.

Dig deeper.

~~~
ummwhat
First let's dig more shallow. Op asked why we don't do anything if everyone
involved wants something done. The answer is we vote for it and we do do
something. It just so happens the severity of the homeless problem is in
equilibrium with political will. Now to dig deeper.

>You’ll find plenty of dirt poor rural people that would benefit from
entitlement programs just as much.

The big difference is in an urban area even the non homeless want to solve
homelessness because it's a public nuisance that directly affects them. See
any thread here complaining about sf. In rural areas poverty is a much more
private problem.

As for Vermont, you're cherry picking. By and large it is undeniable that the
Republican/Democrat divide follows an urban rural line. The exceptions are
parts of the deep South (where the racial divide is more prominent), and parts
of the coasts where liberalism is so dominant even the rural areas are blue. I
don't know the mechanism for the latter, but if I had to guess I'd say a big
part of the rural population in those areas aren't farmers but retired
professionals living in mcmansions. I know people like that but let's not get
into anecdotes.

I'm going to double down here. It's not just attitudes on entitlement programs
that are influenced by rational interest among urban and rural residents.
Literally every hot button political issue can be understood in these terms.

Take guns for instance. Guns in cities are synonymous with gun crime. Owning
one is deeply impractical and police response times are fast enough that you
don't need one. In a rural area guns are still practical and police response
times are slow.

Take endowments for the arts. Guess where the all the state subsidized art
ends up. Hint: it's not Topeka Kansas.

Want me to keep going?

~~~
agent008t
So it sounds like a more distributed government is a good idea. Metropolitan
areas living as city-states, with rural areas having their own rules and laws.
Both having separate budgets for local issues.

Speaking of which - if cities and their urban populations want to solve
homelessness, why can they not do it on a city-by-city case, locally? A
tragedy of the commons type issue, where a city that takes care of the
homeless better will have more homeless people heading there?

~~~
fuzz4lyfe
This is a great idea! Maybe restructure the nation as some sort of
constitutional republic where the federal government holds limited power
(foreign trade, interstate commerce, defence) and the states are left to run
day to day matters themselves. We should form a party we could call ourselves
Republicans.

I kid but this has been a known problem for two thousand years. The solutions
are continually rediscovered, reimplemented and then ignored by later
generations that "know better".

"Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into
despotisms."

\- Aristotle

~~~
tormeh
You could do what the EU does, and make the upper house consist of the state
governors. That way, for the upper house to approve an increase in federal
authority, they actually have to vote to move power from themselves, as
individuals, to the lower house (this is a part of why the EU is relatively
unimportant compared to the constituent EU nations).

~~~
vonmoltke
That's the way the Senate was (essentially) until we explicitly changed it
with the 17th Amendment.

~~~
hawaiian
Except that senators were not popularly elected, but elected by the state
legislature (so corruption was easier). Sending the governors themselves to DC
would shift powers back to the state (a good thing, imo), but governors
wouldn't have much time left for governance.

I think we could improve upon on current system by adding a vice-governor to
the governor's ticket, and subjecting the ticket to the popular vote. Then the
governor could send the vice-governor, his popularly elected subordinate, to
Congress, which would help shift power back to the states. As it currently
stands, senators do not feel a need to pay heed to their states' governors.

------
Darkclouds_1921
As a south indian who has travelled pretty much all over the world, I cant
even describe how I feel reading this article. Because you see, in India, the
trains don't even have doors. It is the travellers responsibility to not fall
out :D. And then there is such an Emergency pulley in each car with the handle
painted red. But since no one has ever used it or changed in multiple decades,
it is completely rusted and sealed with dirt. So it is near impossible for any
individual to completely pull that lever down. The levers are also directly
connected to the trains brake system, meaning you are actually directly
applying the brake. I have seen 4 people pulling and hanging on to that lever
handle to actually stop the train. Sigh!

~~~
inapis
Okay. This is a bit of an exaggeration. The poster above is talking about long
distance trains while the article is about subway trains.

1\. Most trains in India do have doors.

2\. Almost all modern subway in Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai etc do have doors.
The trains won’t move till the doors are completely shut.

3\. Mumbai is one of the few cities which has an ancient train system which
overlaps with the national long distance trains and is separate from the
subways but still carries the bulk of the people. Trains/EMUs on this do have
doors but people generally don’t close these in rush hours.

4\. These days even long distance trains in India have their doors closed shut
and you do get reprimanded for trying to keep the doors open (happened to me
multiple times)

5\. The part about chains being rusted and difficult to pull is probably true.

6\. Delhi metro (and I suspect others too) don’t have chains. You have a
button and speaker near every other door to talk to the driver in case of
emergency.

7\. Trains have doors. People just don’t close them.

~~~
Darkclouds_1921
Didn't mean to exaggerate and it is true that the metros build in the last few
years are great. But this is the image of today's suburban train in Chennai.
May be I should have clearly mentioned that this is the status in south india
rather than india as a whole.

[http://images.newindianexpress.com/uploads/user/imagelibrary...](http://images.newindianexpress.com/uploads/user/imagelibrary/2017/11/4/w600X300/Suburban.jpg)

------
ramraj07
Gotta say, for anyone worried about the surveillance state and stuff, NYC is
the perfect city. Through a unique combination of a dense, diverse, super
populated metropolis and pure incompetence, you really can disappear in the
crowds.

~~~
maxaf
That’s simply not true anymore. Our NYPD operates the so-called “Domain
Awareness System”, which is a combination of good old database connected to
terminals in patrol cars and precincts, as well as metadata-rich security
cameras.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Awareness_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Awareness_System)

The system doesn’t get talked about very much, but even regular patrolmen are
trained to use it effectively. It’s built to accommodate a variety of use
cases ranging from tactical support (“suspect headed north on Amsterdam Ave,
but then we lost him - where did he go?”) to general investigative duties
(“who usually comes by this store on Mondays at 9am?”) and, based on what I’ve
heard from cops, works really well.

~~~
bo1024
And what about Stingrays tracking cell phones?

------
Justsignedup
I don't understand. What possible reason is there for an emergency break...

\- If the subway needs to stop via an external decision, there are triggers
all over the rails to trigger an emergency break.

\- If you are sick, emergency break is actually worse than waiting to get to
the next station.

\- If anything is happening. Emergency break is wrong.

\- If something is in view of the conductor, the conductor will do the correct
action.

\- If the train is going too fast, there is already a timer and an automated
emergency break triggered on the rails.

I cannot think of a single good reason for this. It's like saying there's a
"turn engines off" lever on an airplane next to the bathroom.

~~~
inferiorhuman
_I cannot think of a single good reason for this._

The use case is some sort of emergency that the driver may not have seen.

SF's Muni is in the process of onboarding new trams from Siemens. Someone
recently stuck their hand in the doors as they were closing. On pretty much
any newish tram or subway vehicle this will cause the doors to open again.
It's shitty behavior, but that's what people do. Typically trams in the United
States have door interlocks such that if the doors are open the vehicle
doesn't move. The new Siemens cars apparently don't have well calibrated pinch
sensors and the damn thing took off with some idiot woman stuck in the doors,
dragging her down the platform.

I've had similar experiences with the older ones (where the drivers would
deliberately disable the interlocks — this was before they put tamper evident
bits on the override switch). The driver closed the doors as I was boarding.
Without looking at his/her mirrors the driver took off as I had one foot on
the street and one on the vehicle.

Same deal with people who've fallen onto the tracks.

~~~
gesman
There is absolutely no reason to suddenly stop the train in the middle of a
high speed movement between the stations.

Maybe while train still at the station. But not during the movement in the
middle of tunnel.

Definitely not relying on random passenger making such decision.

This capability need to be disabled to avoid hurting people. Replace it with
the button to communicate with local authorities.

~~~
thinkingemote
That's what the passenger "brake" in the carriages actually does. The brake in
the driver cab is the actual thing being used in this article.

~~~
inferiorhuman
In San Francisco the emergency stop button in the (older) trams will indeed
trigger the emergency brakes directly. I'm OK with this — take a look at the
Eschede disaster. One of the passengers was suspicious of all the vibration
but decided he didn't have the authority to stop the train. Turns out the
eventual derailment stopped the train.

------
rebuilder
I've been wondering - how much would it cost to hire people to subtly sabotage
a large city in order to cause financial losses. Say you're a nation state and
want to mess with your rivals. There's some optimum for how much you can spend
to cause your rival to lose a dollar and still come out on top. That will
depend in who you are and who your rival is.

It seems like it should be fairly good bang for buck, in this sense, to just
hire people to drive around kind of slowly and badly. Nothing overtly
aggressive, but a few dozen people driving slowly around a few select traffic
circles around rush hour should really gum things up.

Even better if you can cajole some people into, say, pulling emergency stops
on subways. Note I don't think that's what's happening in NYC, but this case
does seem to show that a few people could cause outsized disturbances just by
being assholes.

~~~
viraptor
If you want financial losses, you're thinking too small. There's a ridiculous
amount of infrastructure one can break. Mostly telco / power / water / ...
It's a great testament to how people are mainly not dicks, given how
everything keeps working.

Either they're the utilities are exposed
[https://www.businessinsider.com.au/ships-anchor-cuts-
interne...](https://www.businessinsider.com.au/ships-anchor-cuts-internet-
cables-to-jersey-jt-2016-11) or the overreaction is very expensive
[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/17/portland-
flush...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/17/portland-
flush-38m-gallons-water-man-urinates-reservoir)

~~~
quickthrower2
The fact that it is criminal, possibly terrorism - prison or worse... might
put people off too.

~~~
viraptor
We're already talking in the context of: "subtly sabotage a large city in
order to cause financial losses" so if it was beneficial in some way, I'm sure
you could pay people off to do it for you. They'd either be aware it's
illegal, (break this) or not (pee in this lake for $100).

~~~
wolco
The more people involved the greater the chance to get caught.

------
panarky
Not a new thing

2017 derailment [https://imgur.com/a/7Bn0bqC](https://imgur.com/a/7Bn0bqC)

2013 ignornace and fuckery
[https://imgur.com/a/lPrB0Gx](https://imgur.com/a/lPrB0Gx)

~~~
mcv
Makes you wonder why trains even have an emergency brake. A button to alert
people to an emergency, sure, but when does stopping a moving train in a
tunnel or the middle of nowhere fix a problem with passengers?

~~~
c0vfefe
When there's a dangerous obstacle ahead?

If I designed a massive, fast-moving, unmaneuverable tube holding dozens of
human lives, I think affording it a relatively safe way to arrest that
momentum would be essential.

~~~
mcv
If the dangerous obstacle is ahead, the driver is much more likely to see it
than the passengers.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
This guy appears to be using the break in the driver cabs (the unused one
meant for when the train is moving in the opposite direction), so unless we
got rid of those too it wouldn't matter.

------
spookybones
They give the clothes description, general age, and sex of the culprit, but
not the ethnicity ... and I can’t decide if that’s smart or stupid.

~~~
m0llusk
Ethnicity is often ambiguous or complicated or both, especially in big
American cities. If we knew this guy was the child of a Polish Filipino and a
Chinese Irish parent would that help us? Thinking that ethnicity is simple and
allows people to be easily sorted into meaningful groups is dramatically
false.

------
codedokode
How is it possible to do such things and not to be caught? Don't they have
cameras in the stations?

~~~
astura
The suspect appears to use the tunnels to escape, not the stations

>Then, he disappears, most likely through the subway tunnels and out an
emergency exit.

~~~
jasonhansel
Shouldn't those emergency exits trigger some sort of alarm??

~~~
frosted-flakes
The emergency exits in the stations used to, and the signs still say "alarm
will sound if opened", but they were disabled around 2014 because there were
too many false alarms. Mostly because the emergency exit doors are also used
for strollers, luggage, etc. that can't fit through the turnstile, or as a
general exit when there's a large group of people exiting.

Case Neistat did a New York Times Op-ed video on YouTube about it, before they
were disabled: [https://youtu.be/aUcP5OD-ctQ](https://youtu.be/aUcP5OD-ctQ)

~~~
morpheuskafka
Why couldn't they just program an employee ID badge to open the door silently
and let the employee open the door for bulk items?

~~~
hanniabu
You'd be paying somebody to stand there all day at multiple points for each
station. This isn't a situation that happens once a half hour, it's every
minute or so.

------
elliottlan
I heard that people live in the tunnels in New York - is that actually a
thing?

If yes, could this be people brazenly deciding they need to get from A to B,
climbing aboard at A and stopping the train wherever B is?

~~~
g_sch
A few people used to live in the Amtrak tunnels on the Hudson River side of
Manhattan. There was a documentary made about them [0]. They were evicted, and
the tunnels fenced off, in the late 1990s.

I would be quite surprised if anyone was living in the subway tunnels.
Compared to the Amtrak tunnels, they are much narrower. Additionally, people
were living in the Amtrak tunnels during a time when the tunnels were unused
or seldom used by train traffic. In contrast, subway tunnels see lots of
traffic 24 hours a day.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Days_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Days_\(film\))

------
kyleblarson
I'd call the person more of an asshole than a supervillain.

~~~
caf
I was thinking microvillain might be more apropos.

~~~
ekanes
Yes, it's not useful to inflate the egos of people like this. It will
encourage more shitty behavior.

~~~
c0vfefe
Unfortunately the attention economy will always reward attention-seeking
behavior - the more violent, the more clicks.

------
forkandwait
I know I would hate him and his shtick if I were a commuter, but I am kind of
rooting for his brand of chaos.

~~~
starpilot
Some men just want to watch the world burn.

~~~
luckylion
Keeping Moloch at bay by throwing sand into the machine.

I've often wondered if the people responsible for planning guideposts in large
train stations are doing the same.

~~~
closeparen
I'm pretty sure making commutes worse and longer _feeds_ Moloch.

~~~
luckylion
Depends on how you look at it, I suppose. It slows him down, a very efficient
metropolis would be able to cause much more harm at much greater speed.
Strategic sabotage can hinder the war efforts, and it doesn't have to be one
large bomb, a thousand needle pricks might have an effect, too, and they are
much easier to disguise as incompetence.

"Sorry, we didn't mean to put an ad in front of this important information, we
just hadn't considered that people coming up the stairs wouldn't be able to
read it."

~~~
closeparen
Commute hassle does not come out of productivity. Workers are simply forced to
leave their homes earlier and return later, spending less time outside
Moloch’s grasp.

------
rb666
Calling him a super-villain is certainly going to make him stop!

------
Someone
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Subway_rolling...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Subway_rolling_stock)
says they have about 6,500 cars. The number of cabs is more difficult to find.
Given the common rule for newer ones

 _“Cars ending in 1, 5, 6 and 0 have single full-width cabs and are known as
"A" cars.

Cars ending in all other digits have no cabs and are known as "B" cars”_

, I guess it is about 40% of that, or 2,600.

So, about 2,600 cameras (motion detectors might already be enough, if the
culprit spends sufficient time in the cabin) in the cabs likely would solve
the “what do they look like?) problem. Because of the differences in car
widths, you even likely need fewer to cover the lines where this occurs a lot.

------
Amboto2205
If you’re commuting on a New York subway, sorry, but your commute was already
destroyed.

------
Tepix
This points to a possible weakness with Robotaxis: They can be messed with.

~~~
jfoster
Don't you think it's a bit less of a problem when it's isolated to a single
vehicle intended for private travel? By this logic, it applies to every single
road vehicle. What does it matter about whether it has a human or machine
brain inside?

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Get root on the right parts of OnStar's network and it'll affect a heck of a
lot more than one vehicle.

------
magwa101
Cameras, everywhere, surveillance state is the future.

------
millzlane
Could be pen testing. I wonder the motivations behind the individual(s) doing
it.

------
jamisteven
Seems more likely that something is triggering the emergency braking system
than some rogue, random dude risking his or her life to pull this stunt that
often, AND go undetected.

~~~
notacoward
Did you even read the article? People have _seen_ the dude getting on and off
trains. There's physical evidence in the form of unlocked safety chains. How
does reality "seem unlikely" to you?

------
Tsubasachan
I don't advocate violence so don't beat the person who is doing this up but...
well maybe just a little bit.

------
Animats
This guy will be caught soon, with several million angry commuters aware of
the problem.

------
notacoward
Since a lot of people seem to be having trouble with this:

The word is "brake" not "break".

~~~
Stratoscope
English spelling can be so delightfully confusing. Fare/fair also came up in
this thread.

For anyone who mixed them up, no harm, no foul! (And certainly no fowl play.)

Of course everyone knows what you meant, and that's what really counts. If you
do want to remember the "correct" spelling, I wonder if this will help?

"It's only fair to pay your fare. And please don't pull the emergency brake,
so your fellow passengers' bones don't break."

~~~
Redoubts
I take it you already know

Of tough and bough and cough and dough?

Others may stumble, but not you,

On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?

Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,

To learn of less familiar traps?

Beware of heard, a dreadful word

That looks like beard and sounds like bird,

And dead: it's said like bed, not bead -

For goodness sake don't call it deed!

Watch out for meat and great and threat

(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).

A moth is not a moth in mother,

Nor both in bother, broth in brother,

And here is not a match for there

Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,

And then there's dose and rose and lose -

Just look them up - and goose and choose,

And cork and work and card and ward,

And font and front and word and sword,

And do and go and thwart and cart -

Come, come, I've hardly made a start!

A dreadful language? Man alive! I'd mastered it when I was five!

~~~
hug
A similar but longer poem ("The Chaos") can be found here:
[http://ncf.idallen.com/TheChaosPRETTY.pdf](http://ncf.idallen.com/TheChaosPRETTY.pdf)

This version has IPA included, in case anyone knows IPA better than English
and wants to try to follow along.

~~~
SECProto
I opened that link and was going to comment on the use of IPA - because in the
first line I noticed it was using the British pronunciation, 'kriːʧə, rather
than the North American pronunciation, 'kriːʧɚ. But in double checking myself,
I found something more interesting - the wikipedia article [1] on R-coloured
vowels (like the sound at the end of creature, that I was talking about). I
thought I was pronouncing the r consonant separately, but instead it's just
changing the vowel sound, which is linguistically kind of rare. Neat!

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-colored_vowel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-colored_vowel)

------
NikkiA
One cctv camera in each cab would solve the problem.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
So would locking the cab that is not in use.

~~~
greenyoda
Aren't the emergency brake cords on the outside of the engineers' cabs, where
anyone can get at them?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
It would keep the culprit from making his escape through the unused cab,
though.

~~~
caf
Presumably it's left accessible because it's an emergency exit?

~~~
Justsignedup
\- Locking a cab down = in an actual emergency you can't escape the damn
train.

\- All conductor cabins are locked when in or not in use.

\- The emergency break is a big red thing on a string that you can pull that
is right next to either cab exit that is on the 2 ends of a cab.

------
jamilbk
The article assumes a “He”. Has it been confirmed to be a male or is it
assumed anyone wishing to troll the NYC subway lines is male?

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Quanttek
Not to be snarky, but before writing such a comment you should probably read
the article:

> Every New York City Transit employee gave the same description of the
> “surfer” they saw riding the back of the train or darting across the tracks:
> young, male, wearing black clothing and white sneakers.

