Japanese man with death wish and/or nerves of steel waits for passing train INSIDE crossing gates (video)

頭おかしい(笑) pic.twitter.com/Sy3fEZwEiu

— タコサバイバー (@moon15remu) January 11, 2019

The video was filmed along the Tobu Urban Park Line, which runs through Saitama and Chiba, the prefecture directly to the north and east of Tokyo. By the time the video starts, the gates are already down and the warning light flashing, and a man on a bicycle, who’s facing in the direction of the camera, is waiting. He’s not on the far side of the gates, though. Instead, he’s standing between them, with no barrier between him and the tracks the approaching train is barreling down.

“I don’t think he’s gonna get hit, but that doesn’t look like a good idea,” says the person filming the video from inside his car, and thankfully the bicyclist, casually balancing himself by sticking his left foot on top of a sidewalk divider, isn’t struck by the train. However, the fact that the train’s horn can’t be heard until the train is already going by suggests that the conductor didn’t notice the bicycle until the train was already right next to him perhaps because his dark brown jacket made him difficult to spot in the nighttime conditions.

After sounding its horn, the train comes to a halt, with baffled passengers onboard staring down from the windows at the man outside who was just inches away from death. Once the train is completely stopped, the bicyclist nonchalantly hops off from his bike, slides it under the gate, remounts it, and pedals away at a relaxed pace, showing he could have moved out from between the gates at any time prior to the train’s arrival.

Tobu's Urban Park line funs from Omiya and Kasukabe in Saitama and Kashiwa in Chiba