Apparently suicide is a huge problem in France, and most of the time when a train is delayed or you are stopped in the middle of the tracks it's because they're quickly picking up body parts.
That's also the reason for the lack of communication on behalf of the train operators.
Apparently Japan has an abnormally high suicide rate too. It ranks 10th in the world according to wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_ra... while france is 26th.
I would call a single suicide an abnormally high rate but I digress...
In NYC subways, a conductor will at least mention on the intercom that delays are being experienced due to "train traffic", "signaling problems", "mechanical difficulties", "medical emergencies" or "police activity." A suicide could easily be categorized as a medical emergency, hence the ambulances.
"Nous avons eu un grave accident."
Which translates to:
"We have had a (very) bad accident."
I was becoming frustrated at the frequent subway/train delays (while every other local Parisienne just sat tight, chalking it up to an every day event) and she quietly whispered to me on the the train that [sic] "Whenever they say there has been a 'grave accident', somebody probably hurled themselves onto the tracks, and this happens much more frequently around christmast/family holidays for obvious reasons."
Suicide is a terrible thing that literally affects the entire world.
I recently had to deal with my best friend losing his (incredibly successfull) father to suicide. Being an up-and-coming startup-loving entrepreneur... I could have only hoped to reach his level of excellence in the business community. But he just kept to himself and blew his brains out in the family bathroom the other day for god knows what reason... what a shame.
The SNCF can be blamed for a lot of things, including subpar service quality, but I don't think they ever tried hiding the nature of those accidents.
I was astounded when I learnt about them initially to say the least.
In Berlin, "Notfalleinsatz im Gleis" (Emergency rescue in the trainbed) is also quite often. Deutsche Bahn uses "Unfall mit Personenschaden" (Accident with people involved).
Usually, information and coverage about this is scarce for a reason, to avoid copycat suicides (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide).
Another example from the SCNF, from my own experience. One the TGV (bullet train) stopped nowhere and we waited more than 2 hours wondering what was happening. There was no communication. Only when we arrived at the destination we were told the train hit a wild boar or something like that and that was the reason for us stopping. Seriously, why keeping everyone in the dark ? Complete lack of process and customer service. That's what the SNCF is.
It's very telling how they refer to their clients as being "usagers" (users, but in the worst possible choice of word in French) instead of referring to them as customers.
In the subway, they're (slowly) replacing access gates so that you cannot access to the tracks which would reduce a lot this kind of suicide, but 1) it's very expensive 2) unions are against it, because at the same time they make trains remotely controlled..
http://www.france24.com/en/20140521-french-trains-wide-old-s...