Boys Playing Video Games On Railway Tracks Run Over By Train

KEY POINTS

Two boys, aged 16 and 17, were run over by a train in India Monday
The two students were playing a video game on their phones while sitting on the tracks when the incident occured
They were reportedly "engrossed" in the game and could not hear the train's whistle

Two boys in the Indian state of West Bengal were run over by a train while they were sitting on railway tracks earlier this week.

The two minors, identified as 17-year-old 11th-grade student Shibam Dey and his friend, 16-year-old Souvik Das, were playing video games on the tracks running along the Sealdah-Bongaon section of Ashokenagar's North 24 Parganas district Monday morning when a train ran over them, The Times of India reported.

Dey and Souvik, both residents of Maniknagar, had been "engrossed" in playing video games on their phones and could not hear the whistle of the train, an unnamed local resident told the outlet.

The two boys' conditions following the incident were not indicated in the report.

A similar incident happened in Japan back in 2016 when a woman was fatally struck by a car because the driver of the vehicle looked at his phone, which he was trying to charge after its battery was drained from playing the mobile game "Pokémon Go."

The victim, an unnamed Vietnamese woman in her 20s from Aichi Prefecture Kasugai area, died on Aug. 25, 2016 — two weeks after she was hit by a car while riding a bicycle.

The vehicle's driver, who was a worker in his 20s, told investigators he was looking away at the time of the collision as he was trying to charge his mobile phone. The battery of the device was running low because he had been playing "Pokémon Go," the driver said.

Authorities arrested the driver on suspicion of negligence resulting in injury, but he was later released.

Two elderly women in Japan's Tokushima Prefecture were also struck by a vehicle whose driver was distracted by "Pokémon Go" in the same week the Vietnamese woman succumbed to her injuries.

The driver in this incident, identified as 39-year-old farmer Keiji Goo, was playing the mobile game while driving in the city of Tokushima on Aug. 23, 2016, but he ended up hitting two female pedestrians with his car that night.

The crash killed one of the elderly women, 72-year-old Sachiko Nakanishi. The second victim, 60-year-old Kayoko Ikawa, was badly injured.

Goo was arrested and later confessed that he was playing "Pokémon Go" and was not paying attention to the road while he was behind the wheel.

Nakanishi's death was the first fatal accident involving "Pokémon Go," which had come out a month prior to the incident.