Man, grandson hit and killed by express train in Fukui

Very sad

Feel so sad for the parents....to lose a parent and a child on the same day must be devastating

The Man did what anyone would do to save a child.

I'm pretty sure the Shinkansen is fenced all the way along.

No.

This type of accident is a major reason--along with reducing street traffic congestion--why all the JR Group and private railroads are spending a fortune on grade separation projects (often with long viaducts) in urban and suburban areas all over Japan.

Hopefully, this will finally spur the installation of more fencing along the tracks, especially on busier lines with a lot of passenger and/or freight traffic.

In Japan even the high risk areas, even stations right next to streets and car parks have poor fencing, if even existent. Babies can climb from as early as a year old and they can sometimes run too, and you can't explain to them the danger from trains. Not all older kids are smart either, some have various learning difficulties or are just badly behaved, that doesn't mean they deserve a death sentence. And what about kids that do have bad, useless parents, do they deserve to die because their parents are incompetent? Other countries manage to fence their train lines, I'm sure Japan could afford to as well, obviously where it's going through a thick forest it doesn't need doing, but Japan is not the US, it doesn't have many large open uninhabited spaces, I'm pretty sure the Shinkansen is fenced all the way along. Most of these accidents happen on or near roads or towns, there's no excuse for not fencing those properly.

This really is the saddest story I have read in quite a while. Poor kid, poor grandpa, poor family.

Too many of these the last few months. Young children on train tracks or falling into ponds/lakes.

I won't get into the whole fencing issue and adult supervision issue. Rather, it just saddens me that a family has lost one of its oldest members and one of its youngest members. And at the start of the Obon holiday, such a cruel irony. My thoughts are with them.

Sad.

No fences along the rice fields? Why on earth not?

You know, there are no fences along most roads, rivers, sea coasts.... People are supposed to know they don't have to step further.

The attitude seems to be if kids fall in or get run down it's their own or their parents fault.

It's not the attitude, it's the situation. We can try to fence the most dangerous areas, the places where young kids go on their own, but there is no way to make everywhere safe for wild children. The only safe ways are educating the kids about safety from the younger age and supervising them till they master the skill. For my generation, at 6, you were big enough to know better than walk on the railway (no fences at all in my town, cows and drunkards get trains passing over them but we had no accident involving kids in history). But now, children are not streetwise until 10 or 12. It's because nobody cared teaching them. So hold their hands...

This is one of the few problems with Japan. There is a terrible lack of decent safety fencing around trains and rivers. The attitude seems to be if kids fall in or get run down it's their own or their parents fault. In the UK for example anywhere children might enter a dangerous area would be fenced off securely on pain of criminal or certainly civil sanction for negligence if a child managed to get onto a track or fall into a river.

What a crying shame! But, of course, I find myself taking off my hat to his spirit of self-sacrifice. RIP.

At the risk of dating myself, I always make a point of keeping an eye for my grandkids when spending time with them. It would be too late after something happens. Yes, safe is better than sorry.

@Dan

Agree. But it's a little bit important. I stopped a bloke from dying in front of a tram in Amsterdam by pushing him. If I'd tried to grab him we'd both have been dead. And I'd only heard the advice from a website somewhere....,

Push, don't grab....

Practically speaking, it's almost always better to push the child off the tracks

Perhaps. But I doubt people in grandpa's position have the luxury of putting a plan of action together. As long as we're making a play book, why not just run and yank the child along with you as you clear the tracks to the other side?

Desperately sad. Presumably someone's lost a son and father in the same incident.

Practically speaking, it's almost always better to push the child off the tracks away from yourself, rather than grab them, however cold-hearted and/or dangerous it may seem.

Wow! That's seriously sad!

Of course he tried to save his grandson. How could he have just stood and watched?

No fences along the rice fields? Why on earth not? Obviously this tragedy could have been prevented. RIP to both victims, and a very selfless act by Nishiura. It's a shame it ended the way it did.

How tragic but what was the old man thinking? RIP little boy and Grandpa will be forever feeling guilty where ever he is now.... Never play on or near the tracks kind of goes without saying.