Comment by abigail95
1 day ago
I don't tolerate this kind of thing. If you find yourself in a similar situation and want out - call emergency services, say chest pain, out of breath, and where you are.
You may find the train has now "registered" itself at the next station.
It will reveal driver to be using intentionally tricky language. "Cannot stop"
It's not that the train can't stop, trains can obviously stop wherever and whenever they want. It's not that the doors cannot open - train doors can be opened by the driver or by passengers, trains have emergency egress requirements.
The problem is that nobody actually wanted to get off that train. They wanted to complain about it. Comparing it to a kidnapping is offensive and absurd. That's now how people act when kidnapped.
Being stuck on a train that's arbitrarily changing stops is irritating and disruptive to passengers. Faking a medical emergency is also disruptive to passengers, and also to the emergency services, who may prioritise the hoax call over genuine emergencies, which risks other peoples' health.
It's pretty clear they did. No-one would prefer complaining about an hour-plus unplanned detour over simply following their plans and getting off the train.
It's clear they're using the word "kidnapping" as a hyperbolic rhetorical narrative device, and aren't literally comparing it to a kidnapping.
It's not a fake emergency. Acute anxiety causes the same thing. That's for a hospital to decide, not a train company.
> If you find yourself in a similar situation and want out - call emergency services, say chest pain, out of breath, and where you are.
It is if you instruct people how to best lie to emergency services because your train was delayed.
I'm sorry for the second reply but the "hyperbolic rhetorical narrative device" - is a literal comparison to kidnapping. That is what the text says. I struggle to see how it would be the opposite, they're not comparing it to a kidnapping?
I think this just makes a bad situation worse. This can go two ways:
- the emergency services will wait at the station the train is going to anyway
- your health insurance realizes what you've done and make you pay the bills.
You're being downvoted because what you propose is an abuse of the emergency services system. And that's bad. I wonder who's conversely taking action on the badness of DB abusing every customer of most of their services.
I don't defend the situation as "good". I can agree on it being bad, but the whole situation is bad.
The premise here is kidnapping - I don't think using emergency services in a kidnapping is out of the question.
So you want to waste the time of an ambulance and emergency doctor just to be able to get off a train, which could mean that emergency services are lacking elsewhere?
Not a good idea to abuse EMS ever. But certainly given a sample size of enough people, some will invariably have mental breakdowns or panic attacks from being held against their will necessitating EMS. Judging and chastising people having real panic attacks as fakers is fucking idiotic bullshit. Pushing people to the breaking point with brinkmanship games will cause all sorts of unnecessary drama and workarounds as a matter of survival, and not all of the reactions will be positive or properly proportionate.
I'm abusing one government department due to suffering abuse from another. If that causes a different kind of staffing shortage - that's something I don't have control over, but has the same root cause as the DB incompetence.
In my case because I do have not mild but moderate autism and panic disorder, it would genuinely feel like a heart attack if that happened to me. I wouldn't be lying about my symptoms.
The problem with that is - why do I get access to this "out" by being able to call EMS to get off the train? (Provided you agree with me that I would be a valid call). Why does everyone else have to suffer?
My worldview is they don't. DB wants to take you past 15 stations? Here's a mechanism to stop them.
I'm agreeing it's an abuse of the system, but it's valid because it scales. If there was a flood of EMS calls every time DB skipped 15 stations - DB blinks first.
Maybe a better example from me would have been an emergency stop button?
Why is my time less valuable than an ambulance or doctor? You have to make a lot of assumptions and normative judgements for that to be true, which I reject.
Morally DB (through the driver) is the one lying and saying things like "cannot stop". They don't want to stop - that's different. They've already broken the social contract, I'm free to do the same.
The consequence of wasting a doctor or ambulance drivers time is depriving someone else of medical care, potentially leading to worse medical outcomes, up to death.
I’m sure you’re going to pose a hypothetical that you would be in the way to save someone’s life, but we both know that’s not true and even in that situation, you could raise that with the train company rather than faking a new, different medical emergency
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It's probably less valuable because they're surely working, and their job is to save lives and it's time sensitive; while there are chances that you're not working and that your job is less time-critical than theirs.
However I second your idea that "if the train doesn't stop it's because they decided they didn't want it to stop"- and therefore they should be considered responsible for kidnapping their customers unless it can be proven that it was absolutely impossible to stop the train without catastrophic consequences.
EMS on duty vs you on a train, doesn't take a lot of assumptions to guess whos wasted time risks more lives. And it's not don't want to stop, it's not allowed to stop. Do you think it's the driver's decision when and where to stop. Unless in case of emergency there s strict rules they have to follow.
One simple rule for everybody is: Never ever waste the time of EMS.
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Why not shoot the driver and take control of the train?
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Faking a medical emergency emergency is both illegal and immoral.
In Germany in particular, you could be charged for all the expenses. A friend of mine did not fake, was in real panic, but still was at the end of the ”nothing” and had to paid the ambulance costs. Not cheap!
If you think you are being kidnapped or whatever, instead of lying and abusing EMS, you can call the police, and explain clearly what’s going on with the truth. If serious enough they will be able to act better in that case.
I find the downvotes to your comment absurd. The downvoters seem to me what Kaczynski called "oversocialized". They accept being taken against your will because the system says that's how it's supposed to work. And then rationalize their conformity with apparent consequences (medical emergency services not providing care elsewhere, you being penalized for a fake call, and so on).
It shows a concerning lack of agency and a concerning amount of conformity.
I agree that the decision made by the train here sucks, but I think it's pretty clear that the use of "kidnapped" is hyperbole. You are not "kidnapped" if the bus driver refuses to let you get down in the middle of the freeway. The situation is a little similar if the driver is taking you to somewhere you don't want to go, because that is also what a kidnapper does, but that's where the similarities end.
I'm not asking the bus driver to stop in the middle of a highway. I'm asking the bus driver not to go past 15 actual bus stops before letting me off. With the drivers rationale being - "This bus is not registered at any of those stops".
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The use of "kidnapped" is hyperbole and a bit click-baity but that does not change the story much though.
I'd agree with you on this, but abusing emergency medical services like this is a step too far.
I'm disappointed that this deviancy is normalized and rationalized, and that more people aren't freaking out while being held against their will. The status quo continues because it's tolerated.