Train surfing, it's a global fad

June 7, 2013 9:01 AM

Dangerous act by local boys - Mumbai local train Mumbai Train Surfing
posted by KokuRyu (30 comments total)

Train surfing - a dangerous fad in Mumbai (Warning, some disturbing description and blurred out video of an electrocution, but there is some interesting reporting after the 1-minute mark.
posted by KokuRyu at 9:01 AM on June 7, 2013

Looks like young men with a lack of imagination to me.

Full reveal: I know a guy who's in a wheelchair for life because of stuff like this, so yeah, here's hoping this kind of thing doesn't go viral.
posted by philip-random at 9:19 AM on June 7, 2013

The link in the comments I made actually interviews the mother of a failed train surfer. Hoping some India/Mumbai MeFites have a chance to wade in, but poverty seems to be an explanation.
posted by KokuRyu at 9:21 AM on June 7, 2013

Parkour
posted by stbalbach at 9:23 AM on June 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

here's hoping this kind of thing doesn't go viral.

Theses are 2 and 3 year old links. It already came and went viral to whatever degree it was going to.
posted by lampshade at 9:36 AM on June 7, 2013

I lived in Mumbai back in 1997 and rode the trains often. I'm fairly certain one day I saw a head and torso on the tracks. That didn't surprise me much after a few months in India. This doesn't either.

What's more tragic is when the trains are so full -- and they are regularly that full -- that people are bursting out of the doors through no choice of their own.

This issue of Colors magazine is where I first heard of train surfing, in Brazil.
posted by seemoreglass at 9:37 AM on June 7, 2013

but poverty seems to be an explanation.

I don't know that it's poverty, although that impacts everything. When I was a certain age (starting around thirteen, not really resolving until into my twenties), I was capable of making really unwise calls. This applies to everything from skiing to driving to crossing busy streets. It always took a serious scare (often including injury) to set me straight. Such is youth, a lack of imagination when it comes to the true impact of an impact.

Theses are 2 and 3 year old links. It already came and went viral to whatever degree it was going to.

I don't think there's statute of limitations on viral. Else explain Rodriguez.
posted by philip-random at 9:40 AM on June 7, 2013

poverty seems to be an explanation.

Yeah, that's completely wrong. Completely wrong. My best friend's son is 12 and she has complained to me that he's at the age "where everything in Jackass is now something he wants to do. When does he grow out of that?"

I explained to her that he will in fact never stop wanting to do these stupid things, because they are awesome, but in time common sense will prevent him from doing, oh, seventy-five percent of them, and that will have to be enough.
posted by mightygodking at 9:47 AM on June 7, 2013 [8 favorites]

See also, Saudi Sandal Surfing - more links from a few years back.
posted by Rash at 9:48 AM on June 7, 2013

Trainsurfing (Stina Nordenstam, 2001)
posted by mykescipark at 9:51 AM on June 7, 2013

Two of my little brothers had long phases where they tried to make Jackass -alike videos with their friends - one even got some DVDs pressed with proper box and disc art and made his schoolmates pay for it - and we aren't poor enough for poverty to play a part in that. Granted, they were mostly jumping off/into things and playing cruel pranks, but the element of danger was constant and requisite.

It's just that age-old thing: boys, being.
posted by forgetful snow at 9:58 AM on June 7, 2013

Yeah, that's completely wrong. Completely wrong.

Well, maybe better financial means would allow some fellows train surfing to instead do something almost as exciting, equally physical and a lot safer by engaging in some sort of sports activities.

Or they would have just been better off financially and done the same things anyways, but at least they would have had the choice.
posted by Authorized User at 10:02 AM on June 7, 2013

About 15,000 people die every year trying to cross the tracks of India's mammoth rail network, a "massacre" that a government committee said was being ignored by railway authorities....About 6,000 people die on Mumbai's crowded suburban rail network alone. Another 1,000 people die when they fall from crowded coaches, when trains collide or coaches derail, it said. --HuffPo

6000 / 365 ~ 16

All of which is to just reiterate that the trains are dangerous in themselves.
posted by seemoreglass at 10:07 AM on June 7, 2013

All of which is to just reiterate that the trains are dangerous in themselves.

The safer it is, the less it does.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 10:11 AM on June 7, 2013

Well, maybe better financial means would allow some fellows train surfing to instead do something almost as exciting, equally physical and a lot safer by engaging in some sort of sports activities.

Totally. Why surf on trains when you can ghostride the whip?

Dangerous deeds are not done because they the only source of entertainment. They are done because they are dangerous. Those Jackass guys can buy sports teams (OK, maybe minor leagues or something), but they're still kicking each-other in the balls.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:41 AM on June 7, 2013

Acts of bravado - the reason why there is a high percentage of young men in the spinal cord injury wards. According to my friend, the nurse.
posted by Gwynarra at 11:01 AM on June 7, 2013

I imagine the guy with the camera was in the most danger there, not watching where the train was going like even the crazy dude in front was doing constantly, if nonchalantly.
posted by Blasdelb at 11:58 AM on June 7, 2013

Holy crap, cultural bias: young males do foolish, exciting things everywhere, independent of wealth or culture and even protocivilization had sport. I mean this:

Or they would have just been better off financially and done the same things anyways, but at least they would have had the choice.

O_o Because, you know, poor people: without Xbox and wingsuits, what can they do with themselves? At least 80% of the world lives on less than ten dollars a day. 2.6 billion people ride trains. Do the followup math yourself. People entirely unlike you live lives remarkably like yours.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 12:31 PM on June 7, 2013

What greater income brings you. Spoiler: vacuum device and high-speed train. Also, a cheesy investigative segment.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 12:40 PM on June 7, 2013 [2 favorites]

Holy crap, cultural bias:

Yeah, as I said I was hoping for Indian or Mumbai MeFites to offer an opinion. You're not from Mumbai or India are you?
posted by KokuRyu at 2:17 PM on June 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

Not too far from my neighborhood in Arlington, VA last week a kid was killed being towed on a skateboard at high speed by his friend in a pick-up. Arlington is pretty well-off. I think being a young male with a hormonal, biological urge to exhibit alpha behavior has way more to do with this than poverty.
posted by umberto at 2:37 PM on June 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

As a train driver I say fuck these imbeciles. Fuck them for their stupidity and lack of consideration for others. And that has nothing whatsoever to do with cultural bias.
posted by Decani at 3:09 PM on June 7, 2013 [5 favorites]

Holy crap, cultural bias: young males do foolish, exciting things everywhere, independent of wealth or culture and even protocivilization had sport. I mean this:

Yes. Sometimes these foolish exciting things are done in such a fashion as to be something other than just foolish risktaking and an inconvenience when you eventually do have the disaster you are skirting.

O_o Because, you know, poor people: without Xbox and wingsuits, what can they do with themselves?

I don't get it. Do you think offering young people things like youth sports, skate parks with some standards of safety, coaching, karting tracks, proper equipment to make extreme stuff slightly safer or a gym to smack people around in is just a symptom of conspicious consumption like wingsuits and latest consumer electronics?

At least 80% of the world lives on less than ten dollars a day. 2.6 billion people ride trains. Do the followup math yourself.

I have no idea what math I am supposed to do. That trains are an economical means of transportation available to even the very poor? That is certainly true, but only tangentially relevant.

People entirely unlike you live lives remarkably like yours.

Yeah exactly. That's why it's so bad when they are not given the same opportunities to live their life as I have been.

Arlington is pretty well-off. I think being a young male with a hormonal, biological urge to exhibit alpha behavior has way more to do with this than poverty.

Totally. It just seemed to me that this guy trainsurfing was quite competent physically and probably could do a whole ton of other sports / less destructive exciting activities. Maybe he does. Maybe he does have the opportunity but chooses instead to do the more dangerous, forbidden and exciting thing or maybe he just never had the chance.
posted by Authorized User at 3:50 PM on June 7, 2013

Holy cow. That looks really cool and insane. I went to school in Mumbai -- or Bombay as it was known then -- and rode those trains many times... the video made me nostalgic. (But the most thrilling thing I did on those trains was to not buy a ticket.)

I really don't think poverty has much to do with the kids' motivation. In my day I saw lots of similar insane shit on the trains and the roads (I've seen my share of severed limbs and worse), and those were not the poor kids. (The poor kids were working.) I've seen kids on skateboards hanging on to cars in american suburbs, testosterone works the same all over the planet. Without the risk of death, how do you know you're alive?
posted by phliar at 4:25 PM on June 7, 2013

I watch this and I think those kids probably have ridden that train thousands of times, they know every bump in the tracks, when the train speeds, when the train slows so well that this is nothing for them. They watch the older kids do it, they test the waters themselves and then one day get some attention for a daring bid and the next thing you know they are minor celebrities for their foolishness. They get a bit bolder and this is what we get...there are old train surfers and bold train surfers, but there are no....
posted by OHenryPacey at 5:03 PM on June 7, 2013

Bad ass. These kids make me feel like such a wimp.
posted by ReeMonster at 8:45 PM on June 7, 2013

Or they would have just been better off financially and done the same things anyways, but at least they would have had the choice.

I know that when my 17yo brother's middle class friend died train surfing last year in Melbourne, his parents were very comforted by knowing that he had every opportunity to be doing something less stupid and that he was really having fun risking his life like that.
posted by jacalata at 8:47 PM on June 7, 2013

Sorry about your brother's friend.

Since we're sharing anecdotes; When I was a kid we didn't surf on trains. A bunch of my friends had mopeds and motorcycles and we would tow our Stiga snow-racers and toboggans behind them on ice and through some little islands. Great fun, could have led to a catastrophe easily enough. Then when we grew up a little and got cars we would ride on top of the car, hanging on for dear life. Or we would just pick one of the twisty back-roads and race on them during the bright summer nights. All pretty standard stuff.

Now, I was never the bravest nor the most physically talented guy around, but my best friend and neighbor was. He was often the kid who would climb highest or go fastest. Now, his dad was into motorcycles and he also got his son into that so my friend rode motocross bikes from a very young bike. He has broken a lot of bones. A lot. But I can't help to think that if his family would not (for any reason, be it poverty or just over-protectiveness) have offered him an avenue like motocross racing to sate some of that mania and teach him how to do exciting stuff safely, he would have ended up like a whole bunch of other guys around here, who drove their mopeds into cars, their cars into trees or their motorcycles into traffic signs. These days he does passenger duty on sidecar-motocross and mostly rides cyclo-cross and coaches kids in that as well.
posted by Authorized User at 10:10 PM on June 7, 2013

This doesn't shock me too much. This is how people ride buses in many of the developing countries I've been to. (Not my own photo). I guess if the trains have electric rails, it's more dangerous, but at least if you fall off the side, you aren't immediately (necessarily) going to be run over by other traffic the way you are if you are hanging out of a van or bus.
posted by lollusc at 12:48 AM on June 8, 2013

lollusc, I love that picture, especially the way the driver seems happy with the arrangement. I know I shouldn't find it charming, but I do.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:45 AM on June 8, 2013