The mother of Daniel Baran, a 19-year-old who died last year while attempting to ride atop a BART train, is suing the transit agency.
The suit, filed Wednesday in San Francisco Superior Court, claims the trains lacked safety mechanisms that would have prevented his death.
Marina Baran further alleges that the agency was aware that others had been climbing its trains to record “surfing” stunts and post the footage on social media.
Daniel Baran graduated from Lowell High School and was a history student at Skyline College. He died Jan. 29 after climbing out of the BART train and falling on the tracks around Balboa Park Station.
Marina Baran previously told The Standard that her son was last seen climbing between the two rubber spacers where the train carriages meet.
“The spacers allowed and encouraged riders to contact the train’s exterior, and to climb the spacers to the train’s roof,” the lawsuit states. “Indeed, before Daniel’s death, riders had used spacers to climb to the top of BART trains, a practice called ‘train surfing.’”
The lawsuit says the trains should be “equipped with monitors, sensors, or alarms” to prevent passengers from accessing the exterior.
Less than two weeks after Baran’s death, a 15-year-old died while climbing a BART train. The boy, whose name was not shared publicly, was the owner of a popular social media account that featured videos of him atop the city’s skyscrapers and Muni buses.
Baran’s lawsuit isn’t the first related to a death that occurred while surfing a city transit network. In 2021, the family of Todd Odnamar sued the city after he was killed while placing himself between two Muni light-rail cars.
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A San Francisco Chronicle report from 2023 pegs the number of people surfing Muni cars at 46 since 2015.
BART and Baran’s mother, who is representing herself pro se, declined to comment.
In July, Baran’s mother and her husband, Alexander Baran, filed a claim for damages against BART. That claim was rejected in September, the lawsuit states.