A fare-evading passenger clung to the cables of a high-speed German train after a lengthy cigarette break saw the carriage doors close on his luggage.
Unwilling to be left behind without his bags, the man jumped onto the outside of the train when it punctually pulled away while he was still smoking at Ingolstadt station, reported the BBC.
The 40-year-old Hungarian national held onto a bracket between carriages as the train continued to Nuremberg at 175mph.
He had boarded the ICE train in Munich without a valid ticket before getting off the train for a cigarette at Ingolstadt, police said on Friday.
The Intercity Express train, on a six-hour journey to the northern city of Lübeck, was stopped by federal police 19 miles away in Kinding, Upper Bavaria, after witnesses alerted officials to the stowaway.
A police spokesperson said: “A police officer from the state police who happened to be travelling with the train found the 40-year-old Hungarian ‘passenger’ and brought him on to the train,” according to the BBC.
They added that the fare-dodging passenger was “amazingly” unharmed following the incident and was handed over to the federal police at Nuremberg central station.
The unidentified man will likely face charges for fare evasion and “an act disruptive to operations” – an administrative offence.
Federal police have since warned rail passengers not to endanger their lives with similar acts of “life-threatening nonsense” on Germany’s train network.
It’s not the first time a passenger has survived a high-speed train ride outside the carriage.
In 2017, a Romanian man survived clinging onto the side of a German high-speed train travelling at 99mph for 15 miles after realising he had left his luggage on the train in Bielefeld.
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