Improvising a cigarette break while traveling by high-speed train is rarely a good idea. Doing it while traveling in Austria and living there illegally is downright dumb.
A man who apparently thought the train’s station break would be a good time to step off for a smoke found out otherwise when the train took off while he was still on the platform, according to news reports.
The man leaped onto the linking area between two cars, then spent the next 20 miles clinging to cables for his life while the train sped along at up to 170 mph. Now, he finds himself headed out of the country.
A man has survived clinging to the outside of a moving Austrian high-speed train, Austria’s state railway said Sunday — reportedly after it left while he was having a cigarette break.https://t.co/S1JzYoKSqt pic.twitter.com/WOopP2LE3D
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) August 10, 2025
The crew stopped the Vienna-bound train after being alerted by the man’s banging on the windows, according to Agence France-Presse.
Authorities with the Austrian state rail system, OBB, were not amused by the July 9 incident.
“It is irresponsible, this kind of thing usually ends up with someone dying,” spokesman Herbert Hofer told the AFP.
“And you’re not just putting yourself in danger, if you end up under the train there’s rescuers, there’s police, fire service that come.”
Have you ever traveled by rail?
The man, identified only as a 24-year-old Algerian, according to AFP, was arrested when the train reached Vienna — seven minutes behind schedule.
The Austrian tabloid Heute (“Today” in English) reported that the man lacked official residency papers.
He was placed in a detention center pending deportation, Heute reported. He also faces “legal consequences from the railway.”
(As Reuters reported in September, the hot political issue of illegal immigration gave the Austrian Freedom Party a huge boost among voters. It’s an issue throughout Western Europe; it’s not just in the United States with President Donald Trump.)
Strange as it might seem, it isn’t the first time a passenger has had to be rescued after jumping back onto a high-speed train after getting off for an ill-timed cigarette.
It’s not even the first time this year.
In January, according to the U.K.’s The Guardian, a man was arrested after doing the same thing on a train in southern Germany.
In that case, though, the man was Hungarian.
And he was reportedly traveling without a train ticket.
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