Paris metro drivers went on strike on Friday in support of a colleague who is being investigated for manslaughter following the death of a passenger whose jacket got caught in a train door. 

The victim, a woman in her forties, died last Saturday at Paris' Bel-Air station when she, her husband and her son were attempting to make a late exit from a train carriage.

Unable to extricate herself from the doors, she was pulled along the platform as the train moved off.

It is the third fatal accident to have taken place on the Paris underground system in the last two weeks and has raised questions about the safety of the rail network.

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A 14-year-old American girl was killed earlier this month when she fell in front of a train at Cite-Universitaire station, while two homeless people who had been walking on the tracks near Gaietewere hit by a train.

Colleagues of the driver in the Bel-Air incident, angered by his detention on Thursday evening, stopped work along Line 6 – the metro line of Bel-Air – in solidarity with their colleague. 

Representatives from the Force Ouvriere union said that while tragic incidents happened from time to time on the rail network, the driver had been treated as though he were a criminal, adding that the charges against him were unprecedented.

Involuntarily causing the death of a passenger is punishable by five years in prison, according to France's transport code. The prosecution has requested a driving ban against the man, who has worked for the Paris rail network for 15 years and tested negative for alcohol and drugs.

"The further investigations will aim to analyze all the circumstances that led to the death of the traveler," the public prosecutor said.

The train was reportedly an older model from the 1970s, with a manually operated latch to open the doors. Drivers are usually alerted if a coach door fails to close, but union officials told Le Parisien newspaper that sometimes a door with something caught in it could register as shut.

After the series of tragedies, the RATP public transport company in charge of the Paris network stressed that it was going to "further strengthen" its prevention campaigns. Around 60 people die every year on the Paris metro network, but nearly all the cases involve people taking their own lives.

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