Photo/Illutration West Japan Railway Co. demonstrates its automatic system for detecting a person falling onto the tracks at Fukushima Station in Osaka’s Fukushima Ward on April 13. (Tatsuro Kanai)

OSAKA--West Japan Railway Co. (JR West) will introduce a system that automatically detects if a commuter falls from a railway platform and notifies a train driver in seconds to prevent a potentially fatal accident.

This will be the first system in the nation that can detect someone falling onto the tracks without human intervention, JR West announced on April 13. 

The railway operator, which developed the safety device, demonstrated it before news outlets early that day at Fukushima Station in Osaka.

It plans to introduce the system to its stations in Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe.

The apparatus detects a fall through infrared rays emanating from the roof of a station platform.

A program on a control panel analyzes the fall and determines that a human was involved. An emergency alarm light will then blink to notify the train driver and station staff.

Currently, a person must press the emergency button at the station for the light to blink.

It usually takes time, however, before a driver is alerted because people often react slowly when panicked, and station staff can only activate the emergency light after confirming that a person has fallen.

When a train is already approaching a train station, it can often take too long to avert a serious accident.

Under the new automatic system, it takes about five seconds before the light goes on, according to JR West.

The company said it analyzed 126 falls in the past to develop the new system, including how to avert misdetection.

In the demonstration, a station staff member dropped a mannequin onto the tracks, and an emergency alarm light at the end of the platform activated after a few seconds, blinking red.

An alarm also sounded in the room for station staff.

The light did not go off when an umbrella was thrown onto the tracks, with the staff explaining the system’s control panel determined the fall did not involve a human.

JR West plans to introduce the system to stations that have more than 100,000 commuters pass through on a daily basis, prioritizing stations without movable protective barriers and ones where it is structurally difficult to install such barriers.

There were 270 cases of falls from the platform onto tracks in fiscal 2019 and 138 in fiscal 2020, according to JR West.

Of the 1,174 stations in the company’s jurisdiction, 56 platforms at 22 stations have movable barriers.

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