Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

theocharis.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 1001 posts

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#111

Post by abigail95 »

j1elo wrote: post #52
abigail95 wrote: post #20

I don't tolerate this kind of thing. If you find yourself in a similar situation and want out - call emergency services, say chest pain, out of breath, and where you are. You may find the train has now "registered" itself at the next station. It will reveal driver to be using intentionally tricky language. "Cannot stop" It's not that the train can't stop, trains can obviously stop wherever and whenever they want. It'…

You're being downvoted because what you propose is an abuse of the emergency services system. And that's bad. I wonder who's conversely taking action on the badness of DB abusing every customer of most of their services.

I don't defend the situation as "good". I can agree on it being bad, but the whole situation is bad.

The premise here is kidnapping - I don't think using emergency services in a kidnapping is out of the question.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#112

Post by johnisgood »

rwmj wrote: post #60
modo_mario wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Because it's going to the airport and so might be full of travellers and tourists?

Unpopular opinion: you should learn the absolute basics of the language used in the country you are travelling to.

Seriously? That unpopular? Lmfao.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#113

Post by forgingahead »

Svip wrote: post #83

> The train starts moving. The driver announces there are “issues around Bonn.” He does not specify what kind. No one asks. We have learned not to ask. This is one of those issues I keep mulling about; it seems train operators (and airliners for that matter) tend to avoid being technically specific about operation problems, and just say "problems" and - if they are kind - where the problem is. And I cannot decide whe…

My sense is that this has happened over the last 20-30 years as overall competence has just dropped in many of these key positions. COVID was a good example of this - lots of humming and hawing about why decisions were being made, and garbled messaging about the reasons. Basically they get angry and defensive about blaming the "peanut gallery" or "armchair experts" while not being specific, because they themselves don't know why or how something is being done, and therefore being unable to defend their own positions from solid ground.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#117

Post by manarth »

cowl wrote: post #64
junon wrote: post #15

Meh. I have lived here for 7 years, and get a bit tired of these sorts of complaints about DB coming from the US. Germans have exceedingly little, if any, patience for anything going wrong. DB is always painted as this evil, completely broken system when in fact it's been a joy compared to e.g. San Francisco. I've only encountered flexibility and slight discomfort in a few cases where something has happened. I'm not…

rerouted? it was a completly different destination, much further than he was originally. there is nothing "noone can do" about stupid burecracies like "can't stop at this station because we are not registered". First they had time to register the stop when they changed the itinery, Second if they failed that somehow, and most probably because of "there was no manual how to do it", in a sittuation like these, stupid r…

The key explanation for failing to stop at the station is that the train was on the wrong track.

    > "Apparently we were not registered at Troisdorf station, so we are on the wrong tracks"
Many stations have a 4 track system: a left track and right track which are adjacent to platforms, and 2 tracks in the middle, which are designed for non-stopping trains.

If the train was on the middle track, stopping would introduce risk and disruption by slowing/stopping the other trains travelling on the high-speed non-stopping line, and also endanger passengers who would have to dismount at height from the train onto an active track, cross the active track, and climb up to the platform.

Once the train was routed onto the incorrect track, correcting it was likely to be impractical (infrequent track transfer points) and stopping on the high-speed track would would be excessively disruptive and dangerous.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#118

Post by hdgvhicv »

djoldman wrote: post #57

> I was trying to travel 35 kilometers. I was now 63 kilometers from my grandmother’s house. Further away than when I started. Oh boy. There's something deeply human about the frustrations of state institutions and bureaucracy. From the linked article: > How are train cancellations and delays compensated when traveling with the Deutschland-Ticket? > In the event of a delay of at least 60 minutes at the destination st…

Planes have never diverted people to the wrong country. It’s always state institutions.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#119

Post by cedilla »

harddrivereque wrote: post #25

Deutsche Bahn has gone from not perfect to straight up disastrous and antisocial in the past years. They use scamming approaches more misleading than airline's and in cases straight up lie. It's rightfully headed for insolvency despite billions of wasteful and wrongful state funding. I hope that company goes under as soon as possible. Any other solution to the railway system management is better than DB. DB is not go…

Deutsche Bahn ist anything but wasteful, it's underfunded to the tune of tens of billions per year. Cleaning out trees more up to ten meters away from railways was seen as to expensive, now 6m tall trees fall in them all the time during storms. Having two railways next to each other was seen as unnecessary, now we have no backups when one fails.

Swiss railway is seen as the ideal DB should strive for, but fact is that Switzerland invests more than double per capita into its rail infrastructure. German stinginess now compounded over decades, and that's not the fault of management.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#120

Post by dominicq »

abigail95 wrote: post #20

I don't tolerate this kind of thing. If you find yourself in a similar situation and want out - call emergency services, say chest pain, out of breath, and where you are. You may find the train has now "registered" itself at the next station. It will reveal driver to be using intentionally tricky language. "Cannot stop" It's not that the train can't stop, trains can obviously stop wherever and whenever they want. It'…

I find the downvotes to your comment absurd. The downvoters seem to me what Kaczynski called "oversocialized". They accept being taken against your will because the system says that's how it's supposed to work. And then rationalize their conformity with apparent consequences (medical emergency services not providing care elsewhere, you being penalized for a fake call, and so on).

It shows a concerning lack of agency and a concerning amount of conformity.

Post reply on HN