New Delhi: A safety exercise by a Japanese rail company where employees are reportedly made to sit beside tracks with bullet trains speeding over, has been defended by the rail company despite protests by some employees.

The task requires employees to sit beside the tracks in tunnels as the bullet trains speed by at 300 kilometres an hour.

The task has proved unpopular with some employees who as per reports equated the experience with “public flogging”.

A newspaper Tokyo Shimbun quoted one of the employees as saying ‘it was a horrible experience’.

The rail company however defended the exercise as important for the employees for understanding how important every single part of their job is.

A company spokesman elaborated that the purpose of the drill was to impress on the staff how fast the train moved and therefore how seriously they needed to take their jobs.

In the year 2015 the train reportedly suffered an accident when its exterior fell off. The drill was introduced after that in the year 2016.

Talking to AFP, JR west said that it has no plans to alter the drill.  The Shinkansen bullet train’s 190 employees have received the training where they were made to experience the hair-raising incident.