You have probably seen the viral “train selfie” video. The good news? It wasn’t fake.
The video has been watched over 5 million times in 48 hours, with plenty of people questioning why a man would stand next to a train going full speed. Now the man from Regina Saskatchewan, Canada is giving us some answers.
Jared Frank told CTV Saskatoon he shot the video while traveling in Peru with a friend. He said they were trying to get to Machu Picchu and had to walk along a path that took them past several train tracks.
Frank said several trains had already passed by at a slower speed, so he decided to take a video. However, a few seconds into the video, it’s not the train you see but the foot of a “conductor.”
“The train definitely wasn’t going the same speed as it was the first time. It was going normal train speed,” he told CTV by phone. “That’s why the video starts within, like, a second of me getting kicked in the head.”
Frank said he was uninjured by the kick and was “mainly in shock.” He insists he wasn’t in danger as the train was actually further back than it might appear.
“The truth is he [the train worker] wasn’t on the front of the train; he was four feet off the front of the train in kind of a thing. So if the train was going to hit me, it was going to hit me before his boot ever reached me,” he said.
While Frank has been mocked online, he said he has no regrets.
“Honestly, even the truth is a little ridiculous and it does make me look stupid. But it was an accident and I got it on film and I think it would have been a shame to just throw it away.”
Read more: CTV Saskatoon
