BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
Caltrain is no longer providing details about people who are hit by the train, keeping any suicides under wraps.
Caltrain employees made the change to prevent any copycat suicides, spokesman Dan Lieberman said.
Lieberman told the Post about the change on Thursday night, after someone was hit by a Caltrain in Redwood City and taken to the hospital. Caltrain used to give a timeline of the strikes, the number of people who were on board and whether anyone else was injured.
But on Thursday the agency posted an update on social media, “709 experiencing delays due to police activity in Redwood City,” with no details about why the train was delayed.
Passengers were confused on social media until someone posted a video from the train showing paramedics with a stretcher.
Lieberman said Friday that the change has already led to a “sharp drop” in fatalities. Caltrain had two deaths in January, two deaths in February, three deaths in March and three deaths in April.
After the change, Caltrain had one death in May, zero deaths in June and one death in July, Lieberman said.
The Golden Gate Bridge District provided data to Caltrain that indicated that media coverage of suicides, even of the installation of suicide barriers, regularly lead to additional attempts, Lieberman said.
The change was never discussed by the Caltrain board nor announced to the public.
Redwood City Mayor Jeff Gee, who sits on the Caltrain board, said he supports the new policy after hearing from families of people who were killed by a Caltrain.
Caltrain doesn’t announce the name of the deceased, but Gee said family members hearing about a train strike before hearing from authorities makes the grieving process more difficult.
“The families and those that are in this mental state take priority, in my perspective, over the riders that are delayed on the train,” Gee said yesterday.
Gee said he hasn’t seen evidence of anyone dying by Caltrain after reading about another suicide on the tracks. But it’s difficult to know why people commit suicide after the fact, Gee said.
“I haven’t been able to talk to any of those people,” he said.
The Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose State University did a study on 193 Caltrain fatalities between August 1992 and December 2009, trying to find any patterns.
The study found that Caltrain deaths stayed around 10 a year, and there wasn’t any particular hot spot along the tracks.
“The factors that cause suicides are external to the system,” said the study, led by professor Jan Botha.
The study counted 123 suicides and 70 unintended deaths, from issues like cars stalling on the tracks, drivers going around gates or pedestrians crossing where they aren’t supposed to.
That means 64% of the deaths along the tracks are suicides.
Caltrain won’t be giving details about any deaths until an investigation is complete, “given that the majority of incidents are determined to be intentional,” Lieberman said.
The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and a long list of public health organizations have created guidelines for reporting on suicides.
“Covering suicide carefully can change perceptions, dispel myths and inform the public on the complexities of the issue,” the guidelines state.
Stories on suicide can tell people that resources are available, like the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988, the guidelines state.
Caltrain deaths in the last three years — by date and city:
2022
Feb. 14 — Mountain View
Feb. 22 — San Mateo
Feb. 25 — San Bruno
March 18 — Menlo Park
March 21 — Mountain View
July 23 — Palo Alto
Aug. 4 — Santa Clara
Nov. 23 — San Mateo
Nov. 26 — San Francisco
Dec. 1 — Burlingame
2023
Jan. 18 — San Francisco
April 16 — Palo Alto
July 6 — Mountain View
July 6 — Palo Alto
July 14 — Stanford
July 22 — Santa Clara
Aug. 4 — San Francisco
Aug. 8 — Redwood City
Aug. 22 — Belmont
Sept. 4 — Redwood City
Oct. 10 — San Jose
Nov. 8 — Burlingame
Nov. 24 — Redwood City
Nov. 25 — Brisbane
Dec. 12 — San Francisco
2024
Jan. 3 — Burlingame
Jan. 18 — San Mateo
Jan. 25 — Palo Alto
Feb. 13 — San Mateo
Feb. 20 — Palo Alto
March 1 — Atherton
March 12 — Redwood City
March 29 — Atherton
April 7 — San Carlos
April 12 — Palo Alto
April 15 — San Martin
May 12 — San Mateo
July 1 — Not disclosed
But unlike the obviously suicidal act of jumping off the GG Bridge, some train deaths are accidental. While most Caltrain deaths are obvious suicides, the public has a right to know if there’s safety issue. Some may say OK, then only report accidental deaths. But is it right to allow a public agency to decide which train deaths to keep secret? And formal, official coroner’s office determinations of whether train deaths were accidental or suicide often take many months … and so a secrecy policy could potentially hide accidental deaths that may suggest a safety problem that the public has a right to know about and that the agency might not be pushed to fix if the public is kept in the dark. Train deaths have ebbed and flowed for decades. So how will we know and trust that if the recent claimed drop is just part of the ordinary variation over time, or a true persistent drop truly resulting from recent and new secrecy? If it was just a normal variation as in the past, and the long term overall rate continues fluctuating as before, then will Caltrain go back to making the information public again? How will we know? As with scrambling police radio transmissions to silence scanners, gov’t agency secrecy in the name of “safety” is something the press and the public should always be extremely wary of.
Instead of solving the suicide problem, let’s pretend it doesn’t exist.
Color me shocked that when they stopped reporting the numbers, the number of fatalities dropped sharply.
That’s sort of like Oakland claiming crime was down dramatically. Until they were caught falsifying / under=reporting the numbers.
Why stop with Caltrain suicides? Let’s make it illegal to mention any kind of death by any means. No more funerals. We can’t be too careful.
Caltrain should be commended for this responsible change in policy. It will definitely save lives. Most pedestrian train strikes are suicides (~75%- 80%). “A police matter” is sufficient to explain the delay or the crossing blockages to the public. In reply to the other commenters (and the author) no one is keeping these suicides a “secret”. If a person is intent on finding out whether a train strike was determined to be a suicide, all they need to do is wait about one month and look at the Medical Examiner website. Suicides will continue to be counted, but Caltrain (and the San Diego County media outlets) will discontinue reminding distressed people about the availability of this means, which would otherwise be unlikely. Rail suicide amounts to less than 2% of suicides in the US.
This policy (and the San Diego media one) have already saved lives and should be the policy across the US.
Kurt, you’re wrong. San Diego media have not agreed to any such policy.
In fact, the media there play up train deaths much more than we do in the peninsula.
The Post doesn’t allow links, but you can see stories regarding the last death on June 13 by googling “San Diego train death 17 year old.” The news stations spend considerable on-air time showing where the deaths occurred and other details.
Google the following: “10th person fatally struck in San Diego County this year,” and you’ll get an ABC10 video about another death in March.
These reports don’t follow the guidelines antisuicide groups send to the media. They feature video of the train, exact locations so on.
Kurt says:
1. “’A police matter’ is sufficient to explain the delay or the crossing blockages to the public.” I guess he gets to decide what information people are entitled to know? Do we, as citizens, have to sacrifice our right to know so they can do an experiment?
2. “No one is keeping these suicides a ‘secret’. If a person is intent on finding out whether a train strike was determined to be a suicide, all they need to do is wait about one month and look at the Medical Examiner website.”
Well, if that’s true, can you direct me to the website that shows such information? I don’t see it at the coroner’s office website, www. smcgov. org / coroner.
[Deleted comment — Terms of Use violation. Under our Terms of Use, links are not allowed on this website.]
Waldorf, you shouldn’t expect a response from Kurt. He apparently believes we’re in San Diego.
There was a fatal train death in Sunnyvale yesterday afternoon. Sad to see.
I hope this very public Caltrain “secrets” story and opinion piece didn’t contribute to this death. What people should know is that rail suicides require no preplanning or equipment/chemicals/barriers and are often done impulsively. They account for fewer that 2% of all US suicides, so it is unlikely that distressed people will think about this method unless reminded. No one is saying that this new policy will stop all rail suicides. But it definitely will cut down on the copycat attempts.
I’m always suspicious when government isn’t transparent, and I get really suspicious when they make ridiculous arguments for avoiding transparency.
“I hope this very public Caltrain “secrets” story and opinion piece didn’t contribute to this death.”
So we can’t even discuss this policy?
It’s hard to believe that Caltrain is relying on debunked research, the Werther Effect, as its reason for banning public information.
The Werther effect has been promoted by American sociologist David Phillips, who 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.
What does one have to do with the other? Not much.
Phillips claimed there’s a correlation, but two re-analyses only partially supported his claim.
But believing there is a relationship between variables even when no such relationship exists is an “illusory correlation,” wrote psychologist Christopher Ferguson in his study on the Werther effect.
William Proctor of Bournemouth University wrote: “Phillips’ methodology has been widely criticized and the research effectively debunked from within the field itself.”
After analyzing 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.”
Hittner goes on: “Perhaps the most central statistical concern is that these studies did not control for the positive correlation (i.e., dependency) between the expected and observed suicide rates before examining the impact of media publicity on the observed number of suicides.”
Hittner said that Phillips’ studies were re-analyzed twice and the only partially supporter the Werther effect.
September 30, 2019 article by the University of Bristol self-harm prevention research group says:
“[I]t would be incorrect to conclude that all media coverage of suicide is harmful. Despite compelling evidence, research in the field is characterised by inconsistent findings, with a proportion of research showing no effect,” wrote author Helen Fay.