Via Moe Lane, this video drives home the message that it’s better to practice what you preach. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) called a press conference yesterday at a train station to emphasize commuter safety. He’s lucky to still be alive after a demonstration of exactly what travelers should not do on the train platform:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5Wo8p72LZA

The senator and his easel narrowly dodged an oncoming train as he and Milford Mayor Ben Blake spoke on a train platform.

Blake was even saying “safety, as you know, is paramount” when the train sped by, according to a video of the close call posted to YouTube.

You see, those yellow lines on the platform actually mean “DO NOT STAND HERE.” Moe elaborates:

As you can see, Senator [Blumenthal] here apparently decided that the nice, yellow line was a perfect place to him and his easel to stand, while – and this is where the epic idiocy comes in – having his freaking back to any oncoming trains that might show up.  The man is very, very lucky to not have been leaning backwards at just the wrong moment when the train showed up; as it is, the engineer of that train was probably scared out of a year’s growth.  Two when said engineer found out that he was nearly the agent of a US Senator’s auto-darwination.

Consider this a thankfully-non-fatal demonstration of the need to stay off the yellow lines, and to pay attention to the tracks.

Update: Lisa Graas requested that we add this video, which we’ve featured before but seems apropos for this post:

Note that Blumenthal missed one of these warnings.