A 23-year-old was very lucky who fell drunk on a subway track at Marienplatz on Saturday night. He was only slightly injured, although he lay there for almost an hour – until a subway train pulled in and ran him over in the early morning.
As reported by the police, the video recording evaluated afterwards showed that the young man had fallen onto the track at around 3.40 a.m. At around 4.30 a.m., the U3 with the direction of Moosach drove in. The 47-year-old driver discovered the man lying on the track and initiated emergency braking.
The subway then stopped above the 23-year-old. According to the police, he had been lying lengthwise between the tracks and was therefore only slightly injured. The ambulance took him to the hospital.
The traffic police will carry out further investigations. It is also about the question of why apparently nobody noticed the man for almost an hour. According to the police, isolated people can be seen in the subway station on the video recordings. During the operation, rail traffic was closed for almost an hour and a half until six o’clock early on Saturday morning.
All 100 stations are monitored with cameras
According to the Munich Transport Company (MVG), all 100 underground stations are monitored with video cameras. Employees in the control center also observed the images at night, said a spokesman. However, the surveillance monitors routinely jump from station to station, the cameras would usually focus primarily on the platforms, not the tracks.
If a person falls from the platform in a fraction of a second, this is hardly recognizable. The tracks would not be technically monitored otherwise. Subway drivers are obliged to monitor the route and initiate emergency braking in an emergency. Passers-by can alert the control center at any time via the emergency telephones. Last May, MVG postponed a pilot project with platform screen doors indefinitely for cost reasons.