People killed while “surfing” on top of New York City subway trains are typically teenagers diagnosed with ADHD, according to a new study released this week.
The trend of young people surfing the subway has continued in recent years, despite the fact that at least 12 people have been killed outside trains since the start of 2024.
The study, led by researchers from NYU-Langone and the city’s hospital system, analyzed the records of 43 patients under the age of 21 who were taken to Bellevue Hospital between 2018 and 2025 with some form of subway-related trauma.
The study, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, is the first of its kind to look at subway navigation in the United States. The study identified 10 patients injured while subway surfing. All of these surfers were adolescent males who had “significantly higher rates of ADHD” than the rest of the group.
“The most striking result of our series is the over-representation of ADHD: 60% of surfers had the diagnosis compared to 6.1% of non-surfers,” the study indicates. “This association has not been previously described in the train surfing literature and is one of the most remarkable findings of our study.”
The researchers behind the study acknowledged that the sample size is too small to make a broad generalization about all young people in New York who travel on trains. The analysis does not include two young girls, Zemfira Mukhtarov, 12, and Ebba Morina, 13, who died while riding on top of a J train in Williamsburg in October 2025.
Eveline Teresa Hidalgo, lead author of the study and a pediatric neurosurgeon at NYU and Bellevue, said subway surfers diagnosed with ADHD were also treated for the disorder.
“We don’t know exactly what that means, and it’s not that ADHD is causing them to subway surf, but it means it’s something we need to investigate further,” Hidalgo said. “It might be associated with attention-seeking behavior. It might be associated with thrill-seeking behavior, and that’s typical adolescent behavior.”
Hidalgo said the study shows how navigating the subway can cause life-threatening injuries in people who don’t die after falling from a train. Some patients studied at Bellevue suffered brain and spinal injuries, and some had limbs amputated.
The MTA and NYPD have attempted to impede subway riding in recent years.
The transit agency has teamed up with city officials to pressure social media giants like Meta and TikTok to ban or censor videos of teens surfing the New York City subway. The MTA has also tested installing barriers between subway cars on the 7 Line — where subway navigation is prevalent because the line is mostly elevated — to prevent people from climbing onto the cars. The NYPD has also deployed drones to monitor elevated train tracks to spot and catch surfers.
NYPD data shows 185 people have been arrested for subway surfing so far this year, a 12% increase from the same period last year.
The study compared the New York subway surfing wave to a similar trend in Berlin in the 1990s. After 18 people died while subway surfing over a six-year period in the German capital, the city’s S-Bahn transit system gradually decommissioned a fleet of railcars after finding they were easier for riders to board.
Gn Health
