the situation with someone being dragged to death at utica avenue tuesday.
a lot of the responses to this especially on like youtube and instagram have been blaming the dude being like "oh dont hold the doors and you wont be dead", and while yes, dont hold the doors, i can assure you [some] conductors not making sure the station is safe to leave or not leaving doors open for long enough is also part of it.
i was in a "similar" situation a month ago. obviously not NEARLY as severe and not comparable and not emergency-brake worthy as it was my keychains rather than my LIFE, but i was with my friend getting on the 3 train and the door literally almost closed on my keychains on the small part of my bookbag and i instinctively ran in upon feeling it and i had to feel my back to make sure they didnt get yanked off because i felt a heavy pulling sensation at that spot and the doors didnt open back up at all either before leaving, luckily they were still all there, and we started laughing it off about how that scared the shit out of me. we got up off the bench as the train approached and our door was straight in front of us it took us four seconds maximum to get on the train, why did the door almost close on my bag??? i dont expect an R68A to catch the sensor of two plush keychains and a hand sanitizer capsule but its moreso the principle of it. and as the stops went on we kept on realizing and pointing out how they were only leaving the doors open for like five or six seconds maximum for multiple times in a row at a time, and we got on in east new york to ride to atlantic so thats a LOT of stops to keep doing that.
on top of this im also an L train rider almost every day and im now remembering how i have noticed multiple, MULTIPLE days where theyd be rushing to close the door for some reason at EVERY single station and it would show because the automated announcements would be like and i quote "this is a [direction]-bound L train, th- stand clear the closi- ding ding" and the crazy thing is a lot of the time trying to leave that fast doesnt even work either especially at transfer stations because they would almost always immediately open back up on the initial close. any... particular reason why? if i had to guess, i would say this has happened about 25 percent of the time and ive commuted with the L more than not for about three years. and i get they wanna run the L crazy fast but thats still incredibly dangerous to do