Jumping in front of trains

Via WMTC, this guy in NYC jumped in front of a subway train to save someone's life. Of course, this sparks discussion of whether you'd jump in front of a train to save someone's life.

The thing is, in that sort of situation, I don't think I'd jump in front of the train. But it's not because I'm not up for risking my life to save someone else's (I once unthinkingly ran out into traffic to save some random toddler's teddy bear - the teddy bear and I both emerged unscathed), it's that it would never occur to me that my presence down on the tracks would help the guy. It seems the rescuer piled on the rescuee and held him down so the train wouldn't get him, but it just wouldn't occur to me that that would work. I never thought there was room for two people under the train - one, maybe, but I never thought that piling on the fallen person to hold them down would help. If the train wasn't right there, I totally would have jumped into the tracks to help the victim back up to the platform. But if the train was in sight, I would have either run screaming to the end of the platform to hit the power cut, or reached an arm down in a desperate (and probably fruitless - I have weak arms) attempt to pull the victim back up to the platform. But it simply would not have crossed my mind that jumping in front of the oncoming train would be helpful.

Also, I like the quote here: "Transit officials recommend staying away from the platform edge and never jumping onto the tracks."