csouth28/YouTube screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

There is no point parenting adults.

No matter how hard you try, they will still do what they do, even if they know that what they're doing is somewhere to the far left of sane.

So when people jump down on railway tracks to retrieve their cell phones, you know that suggesting this is not a wise thing to do is as useful as suggesting that people shouldn't put lighted matches up their noses.

In New York on Tuesday, a man jumped down to the tracks at the East 105th Street L train station in Canarsie.

Was it to save someone's life? Oh, no. Merely his own. For he had dropped his cell phone and what is a human without an electronic appendage?

You might conceive that jumping down to the tracks to fetch your phone is unwise. People have been killed doing so.

Yet, as CBS New York reports, this man decided the risk was worthwhile. He lay down between the tracks and hoped for the best. Well, how else would he have ever known if he'd secured any new Facebook friends or Tinder dates?

The train driver braked. He ran over the man, but the cell phone retriever was perhaps small or lucky enough that he escaped without injury.

CBS quoted MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz as telling 1010 WINS: "What most people don't understand is that often it's very difficult to climb back onto the platform from the tracks."

Understanding doesn't seem to play a large role when people drop their cell phones. It's as if a vital limb has been misplaced and needs to be stuck back on.

One can only hope that the cell phone, too, was unharmed.