BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
The Daily Post has been seeking information about whether Caltrain’s policy of no longer telling the public when trains kill people has been successful, but the rail agency has taken three months and counting to release such records.
The information might help the Caltrain board decide if the current news blackout is solving a problem or if there are other approaches that should be considered.
The agency has missed its own deadlines and ignored emails in response to a California Public Records Act request.
The Daily Post filed a request on Dec. 2 for records related to Caltrain deaths in 2024, starting a 10-day clock for the agency to respond.
The request asked for communications among Caltrain employees about fatal strikes last year because Caltrain started a new policy in May of no longer telling the public about people getting hit.
Caltrain initially responded on Dec. 13 asking to extend its timeline to respond by two weeks. Over a month went by without a response, so the Daily Post emailed Executive Director Michelle Bouchard on Jan. 29 and the Caltrain board on Feb. 12.
Neither Bouchard nor the board responded via email.
The agency responded through its online records portal on Feb. 14, saying the delay was due to the extended deadline falling on the Friday after Christmas.
“Agency staff were out of office for the holidays . . . We appreciate your understanding regarding staffing issues, the timing of your request and intervening holidays, and the difficulty of locating text communication logs, and the associated delay in a production of responsive records.”
The agency said records would be produced by the end of February.
Last week the agency extended the timeline to March 7.
The message said records could be exempt from disclosure because they “reveal system or facility vulnerability.”
Agencies can be sued and ordered to pay attorneys’ fees for violating timelines required in the California Public Records Act.
Caltrain recorded at least 18 deaths on the tracks last year, the most since 2015.
Caltrain used to give a timeline of the strikes, the number of people who were on board and whether anyone else was injured.
Caltrain employees stopped telling the public about the deaths to prevent any copycat suicides, spokesman Dan Lieberman said in July.
Lieberman said the change led to a “sharp drop” in fatalities. After the blackout policy went into effect, Caltrain had deaths in May, June and July, compared to nine deaths in the first four months of the year, Lieberman said. But without the information sought by the Post, it is unknown whether the trend of fewer deaths continued after July. It seems unlikely if at least 18 deaths were reported for the entire year.
Caltrain board members never discussed the new policy.
San Mateo County Supervisor Ray Mueller in August proposed using AI and video to deter people from going on the tracks. Mueller made the proposal in honor of Dylan Scirpo, 17, of Menlo Park, a water polo player at Menlo-Atherton High School who died Aug. 11.
Palo Alto Councilman Pat Burt said Caltrain has already made progress by hiring Chief Safety Officer Mike Meader, adding fences and putting lights at dangerous crossings like Churchill Avenue.
Caltrain’s Technology, Operations, Planning, and Safety Committee will try to come up with an action plan by the end of this year, Heminger said at a meeting on Jan. 9.
“We’re not public health experts. We’re not psychiatrists. There’s so much you need to learn just to deal intelligently with this question,” Heminger said.
30% of deaths are accidents
Since 2018, 30% of deaths on the tracks have been accidents, according to a report provided by Caltrain on Oct. 17.
Caltrain paid out $5.3 million last year to family members of two people who were killed on the tracks.
Cynthia Denise Robinson, 57, of San Francisco, was killed in her car at the Broadway crossing in Burlingame on Aug. 17, 2021.
Erick Cuevas, 17, of San Jose, was struck while he was walking home from work in San Jose on May 16, 2020.
Caltrain appears to have abandoned the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s guidelines for reporting on suicides. The guidelines do not support Caltrain’s position of imposing a news blackout on when such deaths occur. Instead, the guidelines suggest ways the deaths can be covered.
“Covering suicide carefully can change perceptions, dispel myths and inform the public on the complexities of the issue,” the guidelines said.
If you or someone you know is having a mental health crisis, call or text the suicide and crisis lifeline at 988.
Related
If Caltrain is allowed to keep death statistics secret, we’ll never know how widespread of a problem this is. When one death occurs, we might be tempted to think it’s an unusual event. But when you hear that 18 happened in a year along a 40~ mile stretch of tracks, you have to wonder why Caltrain isn’t moving more quickly to deal with this problem. Hiding the data isn’t going to solve anything; it will just make it harder for people to fix this problem. If Caltrain continues with this policy, I think we need to start electing the Caltrain board in order to put people on there who are more accountable.
Caltrain’s policy change is both intelligent and courageous. Suicide prevention is challenging, and rail suicides are particularly difficult to prevent. While physical barriers like the Golden Gate Bridge’s nets and firearm restrictions within families can be highly effective, rail corridors remain largely unfenced and accessible, making prevention complex and costly.
In the absence of comprehensive physical deterrents, reducing media exposure is a critical “softer” measure. The Werther Effect—the clustering of suicides following media reports—is well-documented. Data from Caltrain, Brightline (FL), San Diego County, and Chicago’s Metra all show that rail suicides tend to occur in clusters, strongly suggesting a copycat effect. (Many of those railroads are in various stages of implementing similar harm-reduction strategies. It seems to anger many of you that Caltrain is “hiding” these deaths. Instead, Caltrain is exhibiting national leadership in this area.)
Some argue that individuals might learn about incidents through other means, but the most likely driver is media (traditional as well as social) coverage. Since 70-80% of pedestrian rail strikes are suicides, publicizing them only deepens the problem. Suicide prevention experts emphasize means restriction, and in this case, that means not amplifying rail suicides through media reports.
While rail suicides can feel disproportionately significant locally, they represent only 2-3% of US suicides—and are not typically a first-choice method unless highlighted by media attention. The first rule of holes is to stop digging—and that starts with responsible reporting, which means not reporting at all.
Caltrain had 18 deaths last year and you’re calling their policy “intelligent and courageous”? Are you on drugs?
Hiding the numbers while deaths increase. And you call that “exhibiting national leadership.” I’d laugh if it wasn’t so serious. Is somebody paying you to promote this garbage?
At a time like this, Caltrain should be proactive in providing the public with information about these deaths. Sticking your head in the sand and pretending it will go away is no strategy.
As a PhD and MPH, I was appalled to read last year that Caltrain had based its news blackout policy on the Werther effect, often called the copycat theory. The Werther effect applies to celebrity deaths, not train deaths. It appears Caltrain hadn’t consulted with any experts who knew about the current research. Not surprisingly, this mistake has sadly resulted in an increase in deaths.
Please look at the clusters of rail deaths in San Diego County in early 2024, Brightline experience since 2018, and Caltrain and Metra (Chicago) experience for years (decades?). If you do, you will not believe that the Werther Effect only applies to celebrity deaths. Yes, it more widespread and more acute when celebrity suicides are publicized, but the Werther effect is very real, even in non-celebrities, especially when the means (in this case, the tracks) are disclosed. Refer to another PhD’s work on this subject- Ian Savage’s (Northwestern University) study “Analysis of fatal train-pedestrian collisions in metropolitan Chicago 2004–2012” One of the highlights listed is “Copycat behavior may explain about 1 in 6 of the intentional deaths.”
Kurt, it’s been four days since this 16-year-old took his life on the Caltrain tracks. Why hasn’t there been a copycat suicide since then?
I know Caltrain thinks the Werther effect is a solid theory upon which they can base their policy. But here’s an interesting story you can find online titled “Why psychologists have got it wrong on 13 Reasons Why.” It states that researchers in the field of psychology have debunked the Werther effect.
“The idea of suicide contagion stems from an academic article written in 1974 by an American sociologist, David Phillips. Phillips named it “the Werther effect” after the protagonist in an 18th-century novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther. The eponymous hero of the book shoots himself following an episode of unrequited love. Shortly after the publication of the book, it is said that followers of Goethe, especially those who identified strongly with Werther, began taking their own lives using the same method as the protagonist. Phillips study, however, did not look at the historical evidence of people committing suicide in the 18th century as a result of Goethe’s novel. He looked at the link between the modern reporting of suicide in the press and suicide rates.
“Briefly, Phillips counted the number of front-page suicide news stories in the New York Times, between 1947 to 1968, and mapped them against national suicide rates in the month following the announcement of the suicide.
“Readers may well be asking: what does one have to do with the other? Quite. This is what psychologist Christopher Ferguson describes as “an illusory correlation”, that is, believing there is a relationship between variables even when no such relationship exists.
“Phillips’ methodology has been widely criticised and the research effectively debunked from within the field itself. After analysing the methodology and findings, James Hittner, associate professor of psychology at the College of Charleston, found that “the Phillips data were not supportive of the Werther effect”.”
If Caltrain’s news blackout policy works so well, wouldn’t they want to share the statistics to prove it?
Judging the success of not reporting by the next three months’ suicide rates is ridiculously unscientific. There aren’t enough deaths for the lack of reporting to have a significant effect 1-3 months later. Not to mention that the rates should be compared over years, and to the same months in prior years given that there could be a seasonal factor to suicide rates.
Not reporting the deaths hides important information from the community. The frustrating slowness of decisions on grade separation could be influenced by people being unaware of the human lives at stake. So it’s important to know whether not reporting actually prevents any harm, given that reporting gives the community better knowledge of how many deaths happen on the tracks.
If the news blackout was the right decision, you’d see a decrease in deaths — not an increase.
Beware of anyone promising an “easy fix” to this problem. Paly students have been jumping in front of trains since at least the early 1970s when I went there, and if there were an easy solution, we would have done it already. Back then, the kids who committed suicide (and this will sound insensitive to some) were those who had obviously severe psychological problems, including schizophrenia, psychosis and chronic and severe depression. They had made prior attempts at killing themselves and had been admitted several times to the hospital for suicidal behavior. Trust me, the kids weren’t being influenced by prior deaths reported in the media because teens were never big followers of the news. Therefore I don’t buy the “copy cat” theory. I do think the problem was untreated (and possibly undiagnosed) mental illness.