Death of drunken man who fell onto LRT tracks ruled a ‘misadventure’

SINGAPORE — There were gaps in the way the rail operator monitored intrusions on train tracks, a coroner said yesterday, as he recorded a verdict of a “truly tragic misadventure” for the death of a man hit by two LRT trains in March.

State Coroner Marvin Bay said that for one, the driverless trains did not have any mechanism to detect intrusions, such as when people or objects fall onto the tracks.

Secondly, the operator should have made better known to the public what commuters can do when such incidents happen — such as alerting passengers on the station platform to press the emergency stop button, or the location of safe spots where the person on the track can go.

Cook Ang Boon Tong, 43, was drunk when he fell onto the tracks at Fajar LRT Station on the Bukit Panjang LRT line.

He was then run over by two trains after midnight on March 24.

State Coroner Bay said it is “entirely conceivable” that someone who falls onto the track might be “infirm, inebriated … or cognitively impaired”, and using video analytics to track abnormal patterns of motion on the track “is a step in the right direction” for rail operator SMRT.

Mr Chia Chun Wah, senior vice-president for the Circle Line and Bukit Panjang LRT Special Projects at SMRT, alluded to the use of video analytics when he testified yesterday.

He said that the Land Transport Authority is testing such a system at one station, but did not go into further detail.

The Coroner’s Inquiry found that Ang died of multiple injuries, and he had a 15cm-wide grooved wound running diagonally from the left side of his neck to his right groin area, as well as multiple fractures.

On March 23, Ang was waiting for his wife to end her shift at a food court near Fajar LRT Station. He had some drinks.

His blood alcohol level was found to be nearly three times the prescribed legal amount to drive.

At around 12.30am, he entered the LRT station alone — half an hour after his wife left for home — and was seen walking unsteadily.

Closed-circuit TV (CCTV) camera footage from around 12.40am showed Ang appearing to make his way to board an LRT train as it began to leave, but he could not make it in time.

He then staggered around the platform, lost his balance, “lurched in the direction of the track”, and fell through the barrier gaps onto the tracks.

Stations along the Bukit Panjang LRT line do not have the sliding doors that all MRT stations have.

Ang lay on the tracks for about three minutes, then sat up and rolled over to the left side of the track, which put his body out of the cameras’ views.

At 12.48am, one LRT train stopped at the station, but stalled as it was trying to leave.

An alarm had gone off, which happens when a train travels to an area it is not supposed to or encounters an obstruction, for instance.

As long as the alarm is triggered, the train will not be able to move.

A month before this incident, there had been six cases of the alarm going off at the station, all attributed to mechanical issues, the court heard.

Thinking that it was a similar issue like before, Mr Mohd Ariff Mohd Yusoff, an SMRT station controller there, overrode the alarm with a switch, and the train left the station.

When the next train arrived at 12.58am, Mr Ariff noticed that it was moving “in a bumpy and erratic” manner. Suspecting that it had run over something, he alerted the operations control centre and went to check the tracks, where he discovered Ang’s body.

The court also heard that CCTV footage of the 14-station LRT line was monitored off-site by one staff member at the operations control centre.

Footage that briefly captured Ang’s fall was missed because the employee was “tasked with overseeing the remote closing of (Fajar) station”, and thus not watching the screens, SMRT’s Mr Chia said.

Ang was declared dead at 2.20am, more than an hour after the police were alerted to the incident.

This was because the electrified tracks had to be shut down to allow paramedics to get on them.

Yesterday Ang’s wife, who was with other family members, sobbed after viewing CCTV footage of the incident privately.

The couple had three children together — two sons aged 17 and 14, and a nine-year-old daughter.