... while driving home. I drove through town onto the big traffic island and out onto the main dual carriageway out of town. Now this is a real busy peice of road especially at 4-5pm. I was following a lorry when I suddenly heard a bump and to my horror saw a woman bouncing rag doll style down the road having being hit by the truck! Sh*t, I was horrified. I pulled over along with another driver and the lorry.
The driver ran out to me saying "did you see her? she jumped in front of me!'. I'd only seen her bouncing down the road.
I didn't want to look at her but as I and the others ran towards her, she sat up and got a cigarette out of her bag!! She was a black woman about 40ish and quite hefty. I was on the mobile to the ambulance and they were telling us what to do and say while the ambulance got there. Her leg was pretty well mashed up but she was totally concious and with it.
She was obviously a bit tapped as she was saying 'I don't want no f*cking ambulance'! By chance another ambulance was passing and stopped to take over the situation and a passing cop car stopped too. The girl who had witnessed it better than I had turned to me and said that the woman had definitely thrown herself into the lorry and we found that she had left her shoes, coat and bag on the grass verge.. all very odd eh?
That certainly wasn't what I expected to see on my way home. I know people can get in a desperate state but to involve someone else like the poor lorry driver was very selfish don't you think?
I've got to give a statement to the police now too.

Very dodgy woman!

Thats what I thought.. the whole thing was pretty weird to say the least. I hope she's okay but i do feel for the driver of the lorry.. he was shaking.

This sort of thing really angers me. If someone wants to take their life, that's sad and terrible, but why involve someone else - someone innocent - who will evidently be traumatised and hold this on their conscience for the rest of their life?

If she'd wanted to die she should have found a different method - on her own.

Odd about the shoes and stuff....sounds a bit obsessive.....mind evidently elsewhere.

Yeah, at first I'm thinking she's perhaps an attention seeker but a split second earlier and she'd have been right under it and dead for sure - She actually hit the side of the lorry - so I don't know, it was a bit final don't you think?.

its a bitch when somebody wants to jump off a bridge over the sheffield parkway too, causes some right tailbacks...

Originally posted by Classic Rock
This sort of thing really angers me. If someone wants to take their life, that's sad and terrible, but why involve someone else - someone innocent - who will evidently be traumatised and hold this on their conscience for the rest of their life?

If she'd wanted to die she should have found a different method - on her own.

Odd about the shoes and stuff....sounds a bit obsessive.....mind evidently elsewhere.

I think when someone is in such a desperate state that they want to take their life they do not really have the ability to take others into account .

Can you imagine that your life was that bad that you needed to do something like this?

Of course I feel for the innocents involved though.

A lot of suicides are committed by jumping into the path of high speed trains, off bridges or even platforms.

It's can be quite upsetting for the drivers involved.

Yes, people do. It is generally males that tend to do this more than women. The drivers of trains have a special counselling service for train drivers who have been affected by this.

Hope you are feeling OK and not too disturbed by it all Wavey!

Yeah, thanks, I'm alright. I'll admit i was bricking myself when I first pulled up because i thought she was dead for sure.. but it was just the weirdness of the situation that got me.

I used to have a friend who worked for Crewe Rail Station, picking up body parts on the track was all in a days work for him. Can't believe she survived it, maybe supreme intervention :rolleyes: I got dragged under a car about 4 months ago, if I ever wanted to top myself I certainly wouldn't choose that of a moving vehicle.

Was the women quite short by any chance?

Short? erm, I'm not sure.. I'm reasonably tall so its hard to say. She was quite hefty, not massively fat but just well chunky if you know what I mean?

Why?

istn it time we have facilitys for those who want to top themselfs?
instead of letting them do it all over our roads and streets?

pfft, what are we paying taxes for :D

aye nu Skillz ...like a kind of suicides R us shop or maybe topyourself in style.com or death by draggin days out for the ones who want to go some where happy !!!!!!!!

I was on a train coming back from Manchester last Christmas, and just outside Woodsmoor we were nearly derailed by an almighty bump: as it turns out, someone had decided to take their own life by lying down on the tracks. :o

I'm not sure for whom I felt more sorry - the poor man who felt desperate enough to do something like that, or the ashen-faced guard who discovered the body...

Originally posted by owdlad
aye nu Skillz ...like a kind of suicides R us shop or maybe topyourself in style.com or death by draggin days out for the ones who want to go some where happy !!!!!!!!

You mean 'Top' Shop?

Sad situation though. If I'm asked who I feel most sorry for though, it would have to be the lorry driver. (and you Wavey).

There are actually some sites for these freaks to arrange "alternative holidays",they actually plan their own sad and sorry end.

Originally posted by tango2
There are actually some sites for these freaks to arrange "alternative holidays",they actually plan their own sad and sorry end.

Not freaks! Just very unhappy people who see no other way out.

Originally posted by bonny
Yes, people do. It is generally males that tend to do this more than women. The drivers of trains have a special counselling service for train drivers who have been affected by this.
My sister in law lives in london. She said that if someone throws themselves in front of a tube train, the driver is taken off that duty permanently because of possible trauma, that they may be too 'flaky' to be considered suitable to do the job anymore.
Lots of issues here if this is so.
Enlightenment, anyone? :confused:

Not sure whether anyone picked up on it in the news last year but on 24 November '03 a member of the public dashed onto the construction site that I work on in Manchester and started to scale the nearest tower crane (TC4). One of our subcontractors' site agent and site foreman went after him, thinking that he must have been a protestor.

During the five or six minutes that it took for the chap to climb virtually to the top of the tower crane a crowd of around a hundred of the site lads had gathered below to watch. All of a sudden the man stuck his head out from within the crane's mast section, looked down, picked his spot and stepped off - plummeting down onto a concrete slab about 200ft (equivalent of twenty five storeys) below.

I didn't witness it myself (was tied up in a Monday morning meeting) but we'd all heard this commotion going on outside, followed by a chorus of expletives from the lads as he'd jumped, and then about three seconds later an almighty bang as he'd landed.

He actually came down onto a first floor slab, about four metres above ground, so luckily most people were spared the site of the body. Apparently some of the blokes were chucking their guts up all over the place and a couple were fair traumatised.

Very, very weird day......!!!!!!

Mad twist to a mad tale as well - check out the link > >

www.manchesteronline.co.uk/news/s/74/74812_death_plunge_man_was_lotto_winner.html

That was the lottery guy wasn't it?

Originally posted by tango2
There are actually some sites for these freaks to arrange "alternative holidays",they actually plan their own sad and sorry end.

My aunt comitted suicide 4 years ago today. She researched it well on one of those sites, but I guess that she would have managed it anyway with or without the help of the internet.

Even if those committing suicide don't do it by some grand public method involving vehicles, high bridges etc they still cause immense amounts of grief, anger and heartache for their families and friends.

I wouldn't call them freaks though, just incredibly desperate and lost people.

Originally posted by Tony
That was the lottery guy wasn't it?

Yeh, it was unbelievable.

The guy had won half a million on the lottery a few years previously, and was an ex-research chemist from Oxford University.

I suppose it was a classic case of a fine line between genius and a tortured mind.....!!

The Manchester Evening News reported on the initial incident with a fairly brief story, but once the facts had been ascertained, the man identified and relatives informed, the full report that they did the following week contained all the incredible facts and some photographs. One of the other crane operators, who was sat in an adjacent tower crane, had taken a couple of pictures of the man as he scale TC4. The one that they used in the paper was of the man leaning out from the crane, looking down, just about to go......!!!!!!!!!

I had a debate with a friend over whether it had been right to print the picture in the paper. My mate said it was well out of order, maybe it was, but it wasn't half a powerful image - it's stuck in my mind.

Apparently there was a lad of in the papers for our local area recently who has commited suicide on cumwell lane, near where I work @ hellaby in rotherham.. basically hung himself..

The guy was only 21.

I feel very sorry for people like this guy because he had the rest of his life to look forward too.. and maybe things might have turned out better for him in the future.

RIP tho m8

Originally posted by draggletail
My sister in law lives in london. She said that if someone throws themselves in front of a tube train, the driver is taken off that duty permanently because of possible trauma, that they may be too 'flaky' to be considered suitable to do the job anymore.
Lots of issues here if this is so.
Enlightenment, anyone? :confused:

Can the driver sue for loss of earnings ?

Actually ... this is a very sad topic ... and it's quite upsetting to think what a bad way some people must be in to do such a thing.