[article]Reckless' teenage dare condemned by Irish Rail

[Mark Gleeson]

Originally Posted by irish Times

'Reckless' teenage dare condemned by Irish Rail
Steven Carroll

Irish Rail has condemned a teenage dare which involved a boy lying beneath a section of railway track while a train travelled over it at 90mph.

A video, which was uploaded to the Bebo website, showed the young man crawling underneath a railway sleeper and waiting for the train to pass while being filmed.

The video is believed to have been made near Monasterevin, Co Kildare, but Irish Rail could not confirm the exact location.

Barry Kenny of Irish Rail described the incident as "reckless behaviour". He said it was "miraculous" that the young man had not been killed.

Irish Rail said it was very relieved he had not been injured during the incident.

"The young man clearly didn't understand that when a train travels over track it causes it to move and he could easily have been killed, crushed or badly injured," Mr Kenny said.

This is the first instance of such behaviour that has been brought to the attention Irish Rail and Mr Kenny said he hoped it would be the last incident of its kind.

The video was uploaded to Bebo.com, an online social networking community where people chat, share videos and photographs and make new friends. The service is very popular among students and young people. Irish Rail was made aware of the video by a journalist and immediately contacted Bebo to have it removed. The video is no longer available for viewing on the website.

A profile of the teenager who published the video accompanied it on the webpage and Irish Rail confirmed it has made contact with the Garda about investigating the incident.

Mr Kenny said the identity of those in the video is very clear and he believes the people involved are 15-18 years of age.

This is not the first controversial item to have been published on a social networking website. "Happy slapping", a game where people attack others at random, made the headlines last year following the publication of videos in similar circumstances.

"I've seen pages where groups of hooligans arrange fights and others where people publish videos of self abuse," Robert Billington, a Bebo user said. "The content people upload to these websites is largely unrestricted and will remain in place until someone complains about it," he said.

© 2007 The Irish Times

We have seen it and it is Monestervein, its a Cork bound train. Rather worrying IE can't confirm the location

Good news is the max penalty is

on conviction on indictment, to a fine not exceeding 100,000 eur or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 years or to both,

And the gardai dont need a warrant to arrest the person

[Thomas J Stamp]

Not exactly on topic but what I love about the likes of The Irish Times is their strange reaction to something that nearly everyone knows about but they sorta don't.

Like this:

Bebo.com, an online social networking community where people chat, share videos and photographs and make new friends. The service is very popular among students and young people.

Perhaps Madam will tell us what a DVD player is next, or perhaps one of those new fangled ipods.

As for Barry............

Irish Rail was made aware of the video by a journalist and immediately contacted Bebo to have it removed.

It was there till around 4pm. Well, that's immediate in terms of IE anyway.

"I've seen pages where groups of hooligans arrange fights and others where people publish videos of self abuse," Robert Billington, a Bebo user said. "The content people upload to these websites is largely unrestricted and will remain in place until someone complains about it," he said.

I always love the way they find "Bebo user's" and the like. Presumably he either works at the next desk to the writer or is a mate of his. What it does do is reinforce for the gentle readers of the Times a view of something that really should be done about this Bebo thing.

Oh, and a last bit of spin from Barry:

This is the first instance of such behaviour that has been brought to the attention Irish Rail

Technically correct. However, it is not the first time things like this have happened and those happenings were witnessed by IE staff and therefore not "brought to the attention of Irish Rail"

It's the little things that count.

As for Pikey Mikey his day in Court awaits. As far as I remember Monasterevin is within Judge Connellan's bailiwick and I foresee dark days ahead for Pikey..........

[2Funki4Wheelz]

'Robert Billington' really doesn't sound like a Bebo user.

Are they not all like Chanelle1985 and Britney_fan?

[Mark Gleeson]

Its not the first incident of someone doing something really really stupid for kicks

There has been an ongoing problem for years where teenagers would stand on the red buffer beam between a set of DART coaches while it was moving, thats the only reason the refurbished DART have the strange new headlight pods, its called an 'anti surfing device'

I've witnessed it and I know several others have as well

[comcor]

The video is still up on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_X-02FiLUI

Why is there so much ballast missing from the track that it's possible to get under it?

[Mark Gleeson]

A. The wasters removed it, it doesn't look like a track defect

B. Minor subsidence

Track looks fairly stable as the train goes through

[Rashers]

Still up there on Youtube. Feedback rolling in every few minutes, so it must be getting linked via some other sites.
What is the local media reaction like about it?
Bored youth, or idiots...

[Colm Donoghue]

Originally Posted by Thomas J Stamp

Not exactly on topic but what I love about the likes of The Irish Times is their strange reaction to something that nearly everyone knows about but they sorta don't.

...

Perhaps Madam will tell us what a DVD player is next, or perhaps one of those new fangled ipods.

This is the same person who let it be explained that the picture of the eejit in the celtic jersey protesting about foreign games was a supporter of Glasgow Celtic football club, a scottish soccer team....