Parents and child carers are being warned after Metro Trains has released footage of prams rolling onto train tracks.
CCTV footage has captured the moment a mother and father look away from their baby in a pram for just seconds before it starts rolling onto train tracks.
At the start of the footage, the parents can be seen pushing a pram with a baby in it on a train platform before the mother adjusts her clothes as her partner checks the timetable.
A few seconds later, their baby’s pram started rolling over the edge of the platform and landing straight into the tracks, with the infant slipping out of the pram and falling hard onto the surface of the tracks.
Both parents can be seen scrambling to get their baby back to safety with the father jumping in, while the mother waits on the edge of the platform.
It is unclear, however, if the child had suffered any injuries from the fall.
In another incident, at the Upper Ferntree Gully, a suburb of Melbourne, a lady can be seen struggling to lift a pram to safety by herself after it went down the tracks. Luckily, the child seemed unharmed from the whole ordeal.
Another piece of footage captured at Ashburton train station shows a woman jumping down onto the train tracks to retrieve her empty runaway pram. She then pulled her toddler down onto the train tracks with her before dragging the pram to the opposite platform.
These and more footage of incidents, released exclusively to 9NEWS, that happened within nine months have prompted Metro Trains to launch a new pram safety campaign.
“The footage definitely shows that it can happen so quickly,” Metro’s Rob Guest said. “What we really want to reinforce is if a situation like that does occur, for parents or any member of the public that may be at our station, to hit that emergency button so we can immediately respond.”
Michael Pane from Baby Bunting suggested for parents to keep these in mind: “They must have a wrist strap, red brake and five-point harness. What we’d like parents and carers to be able to do is when they arrive at a platform, to turn their pram so it’s parallel to the tracks, apply the brake and hold their pram at all times.”
However, safety features can only do so much. “Supervision is always the number one and the key to preventing accidents like this,” Jason Chambers from Kidsafe said.
Sources: 9news.com.au and Dailymail.co.uk