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The Tuesday evening rush was all but over as the man walked, unsteadily, down the stairs onto the subway platform. A train, its doors already closed, was picking up speed as it pulled out.

In a few terrifying seconds, the train pulled the man into the tunnel just past the stop at Grand Central Station in the heart of Manhattan. He was unconscious when the police arrived and was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics.

Exactly how the episode unfolded remained unclear on Wednesday. The authorities said that, contrary to earlier reports, neither the man’s coat nor the strap of a bag had gotten caught in the doors of the train. The police had not released the man’s name on Wednesday afternoon.

Whatever the cause, such accidents are so rare that when they do happen they send shudders through riders, rekindling fears about standing too close to the edge of the platform.

While deterring people from deliberately jumping in front of trains is hard, subway officials long ago sought to avoid accidents by installing yellow strips with a knobby surface that are supposed to deliver a tactile warning: Stand back.

That was a cautionary message for subway riders who had been accustomed to leaning over the edge, looking into the darkness for the headlights of an approaching train. And it was a message that some passengers were heeding more carefully than ever on Wednesday.

“I’m not standing on that yellow line,” Mark Joseph, 69, said on Wednesday as he stood on the platform where the accident had occurred and a transit employee in a yellow vest shouted “Step back!”

“A lot of people don’t listen,” Mr. Joseph said. “They walk right up to the edge. I’m scared you can trip or somebody can push you. It’s not worth it. You can die.”

But some passengers and some behavior experts said New Yorkers have become so accustomed to the yellow platform markings that they ignore them. What matters more is squeezing onto an already-crowded train, elbowing past other people and slicing through a crowd.

“I guess these dots are supposed to make you aware of the danger,” said Antana Locs, 60. “But when people see the train coming, it’s a natural instinct to lean forward and be first on the train.”

Witnesses told the police that the man had been walking on the yellow caution line along the edge of a platform around 7:20 p.m. as the train pulled out.

Surveillance-camera video from inside the station showed his body being thrown against a staircase and pulled into the tunnel, according to a law enforcement official.

The man’s body struck an electrical box near the entrance to the tunnel and set off a flash that caught the attention of the train operator, who applied the brakes, the official said.

Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Emma G. Fitzsimmons, Edgar Sandoval, Nate Schweber, Matt Stevens and Ashley Southall contributed reporting. Susan Beachy contributed research.

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