Rail agency ‘not liable’ for passenger’s accident

A COMMUTER’S claim that negligence on the part of the Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa) caused him to fall from a moving train shortly before it reached a station was dismissed by the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria yesterday.

The court was dealing with an incident that occurred in July 2017.

Justice Zihor told the court he fell from the train while it was approaching the platform at Kopanong station in Soshanguve. As a result, he broke three bones in his left leg.

He said he had a valid ticket and was travelling from Mabopane to Pretoria. He said that before the train reached Kopanong, some passengers from the back coaches of the train came through to the coach he was in. As a result of the pressure from these passengers, he was pushed through an open door of the coach and fell out before the train reached the platform.

He testified that he fell on top of a concrete slab alongside the railway tracks. According to Zihor, the train had no doors and windows, or straps to hold onto. He did not remember what happened after he fell and only woke up in hospital the following day.

He claimed that he had boarded the train around lunch time, but it only departed around at around 3pm.

However, paramedics said Zihor was fully conscious when they arrived at the scene, and spoke to them.

According to the paramedics, the incident happened at night, as they were only called to the scene after 8pm. They found Zihor lying on the ground next to the tracks.

Zihor had claimed he was pushed out at the platform of the station as the other commuters tried to rush out of the doors.

But a Prasa security officer told the court that after the fall, Zihor told him that he had boarded the train at Mabopane station. When he realised that it was not going to stop at Kopanong, he opened the doors while the train was in motion and decided to jump off.

Judge Nomonde Mngqibisa-Thusi found that that were discrepancies between the time at which Zihor claimed that he had fallen from the train and the time at which the emergency services said they were called to the scene.

Further, he was on a non-passenger train, which did not stop at any of the stations it passed on its journey.

The judge said Zihor was an unimpressive witness. He could not explain how he boarded the train at around 2pm, yet the fall only happened later that night. She accepted Prasa’s version that he illegally boarded a non-passenger train, and when he realised it did not stop where he wanted to disembark, he simply jumped off.