The New York City subway averages 26 suicides a year and claims around 200 victims total. Is it any wonder that we’re all slightly more sketched out when we step onto the train for that morning commute? The good news is that despite recent events, New Yorkers have less reason to freak out over subway safety these days than they ever have before. The city’s underground transportation system has been under construction for over a century, and people have been dying as a result of it pretty much nonstop since digging first started. Compared to the exotic accidents, crashes, and tunnel failures of yesteryear, the causes of death for more recent victims of the subway have become downright mundane.

1900

Drilling the IRT

When drilling began for the original Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT) system in 1900, the IRT Company recruited miners as skilled laborers useful for their underground experience. The miners made $3.50 a day and put up with a working environment that held all the terrors of an actual mine: rock slides, patches of loose gravel, and sudden encounters with underground ponds. There were a reported 16 deaths during the original construction.

1903

The Fort George Tunnel Collapse

A majority of the deaths during that initial construction were the result of the worst subway construction accident in the city’s history: 10 workers died when the roof of Fort George Tunnel collapsed in 1903. The IRT finally opened on October 27, 1904, running from City Hall to 145th Street at Broadway.

1909

Chinese Gang Warfare

When the Tong gangs ran the isolated settlement of Chinatown in the early days of the 20th century, a common strategy for the disposal of bodies was to stash them in secret tunnels off the subway.

1918

The Malbone Street Wreck

In the deadliest single event ever to befall the subway system, over 100 people were killed in the Malbone Street Wreck of 1918. A wooden five-car subway train derailed just before Prospect Park Station when an out-of-control driver, gone unnoticed due to a lack of subway attendants following a worker strike, took a particularly tight curve at 30 miles per hour when it was meant for just six. The passengers were crushed in their wooden train car.

1928

Times Square Breakdown

Speaking of catastrophic mechanical failures, a broken track switch at Times Square caused a subway car to crash straight into the wall in 1928, killing 16 and injuring 100.

1847-1929

Not-So-High Line

Before the High Line was a park, and before it was even an elevated railroad, intra-city shipping ran via street-level trains moving down the West side of Manhattan. So many accidents occurred that the route was nicknamed Death Avenue.

1953

Driver Suicide

The riders might be the most visible victims of the subway, but train drivers have often suffered worse fates. A 1968 New York Magazine feature on “Subways and Safety” by Sophy Burnham tells the gruesome story of the suicidal motorman John P. Murren Jr., who in 1952 drove an empty IRT train into the back of another vacant train docked at Jerome Avenue in the Bronx, crumpling the car and toppling sideways. Murren was 37 years old and had a record of accidents, but this one was intentional — he didn’t even try to put the brakes on.

1954

Foot Amputation

An empty Independent (IND, separate from the IRT and the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit or BMT) train crashed into a Bronx terminal wall and the motorman was trapped in the cab. He had to have his foot amputated before he could be rescued, Burnham recounts.

1965

Power Failure

In November 1965, 800,000 people were stranded for six hours in dark subway tunnels. Transit police walked people out along the tracks while warming them with emergency blankets. There are no recorded deaths, but how freaky would that be?

1969

Accidental Electrocution

What does the subway run on? Electricity! And what effect does all that electricity have on the human body? Instant death! In 1969, a passenger was electrocuted when he inadvisably walked out of a stalled train into a tunnel and accidentally touched the third rail that delivers power to the trains.

1970

Train Collision

At 7:45 am on Wednesday, May 20, 1970, an empty IND train collided with a crowded rush-hour subway train and split the fifth car in half. Two people were killed and 71 injured.

1981

Suicide via Third Rail

Gerard Coury, a shirtless, down-on-his-luck 27-year-old from Connecticut, was taunted by a mob of passengers at 42nd Street, who jeered and pelted him with cans. Goaded into a state of panic, Linda Wolfe writes, Coury, who may have been under the influence of hallucinogenics, jumped onto the subway tracks, hit the third rail and died. In his disturbed state, the youth reached out and touched the rail again intentionally after the initial contact.

1991

Drunk Driving

In 1991, driver Robert Ray was drunk when he derailed a southbound four train, killing five passengers and injuring 200. He survived and was later convicted of manslaughter.

1993

OG Subway Pusher

The 38-year-old Eloise Ellis might have become the first serial subway pusher when, in 1993, she shoved two passengers in front of two trains at two different stations over the course of one afternoon, notes Daniel Martell, a psychologist who studies the impulse to push people onto the rails and its perpetrators. The pushers, he explains, are often escaped or neglected mental patients who think they are defending themselves or “helping” their unwitting victims.

1995

Granny Pusher

Reuben Harris, 42, pushed a 63-year-old grandmother into an oncoming train, and promptly walked away. He was quickly apprehended.

2011

Passing Out

A woman in her 20s fainted and fell onto the tracks just before a 5 train rolled into a station. Lesson: Make sure you keep your blood sugar up.

2011

Tunnel Wandering

Teenager Brant Rowe was killed after he wandered onto the subway tracks and strolled 200 feet inside the tunnel. The subway was shut down and a search called, but the MTA decided to reopen the tunnel. Rowe’s family believes he may have been saved if the search had gone on for longer.

2012

Elevator Asphyxiation

An 88-year-old woman was killed when her clothing caught in the steps of a moving escalator. She got tangled and was quickly asphyxiated, shocking bystanders and inducing mass paranoia of moving staircases.

2012

Drunk Attack

A drunk homeless man named Ryan Beauchamp got in an unprovoked fight with college student Joshua Basin at the Bedford Avenue stop and dragged Basin onto the tracks. Beauchamp clambered out before the train came, but Basin wasn’t so lucky.

According to a 2003 to 2007 study conducted by the New York City Medical Examiner's Office, 90 percent of those who died on the subway were male, 76 percent of the incidents were accidental, and 42 percent involved alcohol. As long as we keep getting to work by riding giant metal worms through man-made caverns drilled into the Earth’s crust, the New York City subway is going to keep claiming its sacrifices. But one thing to keep in mind is Sophy Burnham’s sage advice: If you get caught on the tracks, the best strategy for survival is laying face-down in the mud between the rails and, we assume, praying like hell. (Illustration: Nate Cepis)