SURF TO YOUR HEART'S CONTENT

 These days (around December 2024), a regular announcement on the NYC subway is about subway surfing.  Someone claiming to be a teenager would say that subway surfing - the act of standing on the roof of a moving subway car - is uncool and definitely unsafe.  That it can kill you.  I don't know how effective that is, to have someone supposedly your peer, but not someone you know personally, to tell you subway surfing is unsafe.  It is totally stupid but kids, many of them, are stupid and will do stupid things.  I have an idea that probably can never be put into practice but let me outline it anyway.

A different, common occurrence in the subway system is people getting onto the track to retrieve things they accidentally dropped there.  It is not too difficult to hop onto the track, but it is really difficult to climb back onto the platform.  Sure, I haven't actually done it, but the typical subway rider doesn't have the upper body strength to easily pull themself up onto the platform.  News stories with happy ending reveal that some Good Samaritans aided the daredevil.  Unhappy stories, well, another life lost over something that may not even be that valuable.

My idea is to build a wall somewhere publicly accessible, with MTA personnel guarding it, and let wannabe daredevils take a shot at it.  With our litigious society, the wannabes would be required to sign some waiver, in case they fall off the wall.  But let them try, most probably won't make it, and in real life would become a death statistic in the subway system.  Publicize such events.  Maybe it's in some wide open space in the subway system, maybe at some local park.  Back to subway surfing.  Same idea, but now make it a subway car, maybe even re-use some real one.  Simulate the motion, low beams, tunnel entrance etc.  Make it seems real, but with foam of course.  Let the stupid kids, under supervision, tackle the challenge, with waivers etc.

Of course it won't happen.  There is no money for it, or at least there's no money for it until the MTA is properly audited and money waste is no longer a thing.  Stupid kids would think it is uncool to even try, better to do something really stupid, and if they don't die, boast about it.