I doubt its that they don't care, its that they don't know them and of course the impact of the incident spreads far and wide. The reality is of course a fatal accident on the road can result in the road being shut for many hours, but in most cases there are many alternative routes to avoid the congestion.
Rail transport is I suspect subject to many more suicide attempts than any other type of transport and this is the third incident to have affected the Southern lines in 2 weeks, in fact add in tresspasser incidents and its probably a lot more. Passengers are therefore becoming insensitive to these events.
Hopefully the location of this will mean that recovery of the train service is much quicker.
Indeed. I don't think people are being insensitive when they complain after fatalities, the problem is that an the immediate aftermath when everything is at a stand the are no answers to give passengers and that is, understandable, difficult for people to understand. When you ask "how long until my train starts to move again" and get an answer along the lines of "nobody knows" it's very frustrating.
I have been caught up in a fair few resulting delays as a driver and when speaking to passengers all I can say is what has happened, nothing can move past the area and that I will update when I get more info. People then ask me the same question over and over which no one can answer...how long until we will get moving again. I don't think it's insensitive, why should anyone trying to get home after a long day at work care about someone who has been killed, its not like they knew them and many people die every hour in various ways, just so happens that these deaths cause travel problems aswell. But the problem is that no one knows how long until trains will move again.
I always explain this but an open ended delay is certainly very frustrating for all and people find it difficult to understand that we are waiting police, paramedics, a doctor, fire crews and an undertaker to arrive from all over the area, once all these people arrive they need to do what they need to do which can take a while, the police need to make sure they have all the evidence they need before authorising the clear up, the clear up can take various amounts of time depending and that's before the headache starts of trying to piece the service back together with trains and train crews stranded all over etc.
And when this happens in the morning rush hour it is rare to recover the service fully within that same day, especially at busy 'pinch points' or networks such as the Thameslink where a fatality in Sussex can quickly disrupt a completely different region such as Bedfordshire. It will take hours and hours to get all trains and crews back on diagram and in the mean time there will be constant problems with stock not being where it should be, crew breaks and driving hours causing problems and trains waiting a relief driver who is somewhere else (and its not as simple as asking the current driver to carry on as that then means that drivers next train will have no relief etc).
hock: