If you haven’t seen the scary bit of the MRT video that went viral today, allow us to quickly bring you up to speed. The clip, viewed hundreds of thousands of times already, involves a pair of women racing toward a soon-to-be-departing train at the Downtown Line’s Little India station.
We’ve all done it. Well, most of us have. But while the first woman in the video clears the doors easily, the next woman we see has the doors close right in her face — and this is where things get weird.
In the video, she then appears to pry the platform doors open and step between the platform and car. Unfortunately for her, the car doors remain firmly closed, leaving her trapped in between when the platform doors shut behind her.
A quick-acting MRT employee then rushes over to help, and seconds later, with her tugging on them, the train doors open and she spills inside.
So … what exactly happened? If you thought she actually pried both sets of doors open, you would be sadly mistaken.
Train operator SBS Transit said in a statement early this evening that the platform screen doors actually retracted on their own after the system detected an obstruction, in this case, the commuter in question.
A staff on board the train, which was en route to Expo, then activated an emergency device, which allowed the train doors to reopen moments later, according to Tammy Tan, senior vice president for corporate communications. The incident, by the way, which lasted about 20 seconds, took place at roughly 3:30pm on Monday.
If it were not for that train staff’s swift action, the woman’s dangerous behavior could have caused both the train and platform doors to be locked, which would have led to a service disruption.
“For safety reasons, commuters must not attempt such actions. This is extremely dangerous and could result in serious injury,” Tan said in the statement. “It could also result in a service disruption as well as cause damage to public property.”
More news from the Little Red Dot at Coconuts.co/Singapore.
