Occassionally I will find the magic elevator where this button does work, but for the most part these buttons seem as usefull as the HR department in a Dilbert cartoon.
Typical scenario:
Enter elevator. Push button for desired floor, stand back and wait. After half a nanosecond when the doors haven’t closed I get impatient and begin pushing the “close door” button. Why aren’t we there NOW?!?
The doors are still open, so I begin the game of pushing the “close door” button repeatedly. Doors are still open.
I am now HOLDING the button down while everyone else on the elevator wonders why this maniac needs to go up and down a couple floors with such speed.
Finally the doors begin to close.
Thats when some Johnny Come Lately inevitably arrives and needs to get on the elevator too, which opens the doors again and we repeat all of the above. (Another subject for another thread)
The “Open door” button works remarkably well, especially when you’ve grown up with a handicapped grandma who takes a little longer to get on/ off an elevator. That button is my friend. But it’s evil twin on the otherhand, what’s the scoop?
After these required times have passed, the door close button will function normally.
There are elevators still in service that aren’t capable of meeting all or part of the ADA requirements without very expensive modifications. In those cases, the building owner can make an argument that the expense of the modifications is prohibitive and get a waiver for their equipment. In those elevators, the door close button may work properly, or it may have been disabled during automatic operation to partially comply with the ADA.
In manual operation, the Door Close button is the only way to close the doors. In fact, you must hold the button in until the doors are fully closed.
I’ve known them to work, but only in the sense that you’re telling the elevator that you’re happy for it to close the doors, should all other factors affecting that decision be green.
Example: The lifts at a local multi-storey car park have an optical sensor on the door - the lift won’t start closing the doors until something like ten seconds after the sensor has been triggered - so a bunch of people might enter and wait, then nine seconds later, someone else dashes through the just-about-to-close door. If they all do nothing, there will be another ten second wait until the doors close and the lift makes ready to depart. If someone presses the door close button, the doors don’t close instantaneously, but the ten-second wait is significantly reduced (I imagine it’s reduced to the minimum time required to perform the necessary checks before departure).
So yes, at least in some cases, it works, but it doesn’t force the lift to do anything - it merely signals your desire to the lift control system.
The one in my building at work is definitely useful. If you just get in and stand there, there’s a good ten second wait before the doors meander closed. If you get in and hit the CDB it’ll give it a second or two then the doors will shut with otherwise exhibited pep.
The close door buttons at my work do seem to work as advertised. The hospital was built in several stages, and this holds true in the older wings as well as the newer ones. And they don’t just work in “emergency mode” (where a passenger can commandeer the elevator if they have the key).
When I went on jury duty a couple of years ago in Trenton, I was particularly annoyed at how agonizingly slow the elevators were that took us from the ground floor of the courthouse to the third floor where the action was.
You would get in the elevator and sit a full minute before the doors closed, and when they did close, it was at a slow enough pace that would have safely allowed a tortoise or two to pass before the doors actually shut.
It wasn’t until the third or forth day that I realized that this was probably by design: Imagine the extreme agitation and frustration of an escaped defendant who is standing in the elevator waiting for the doors to close as the bailiff is running down the hall after him.
I work in a Federal Building in D.C and they certainly work here. The building is only about three or four years old and normally the elevator doors take seven to eight seconds to close, but if you hold the close door button they will pretty much close right away.
Most of the ones that I’ve used work, in that they give you something to do while you wait for the doors to close by themselves. Otherwise, not so much.
I feel so lucky whenever this question comes up. The close door button in the elevator in my apartment building works perfectly. Sometimes, if I’m quick getting on, I can start the doors closing before they’ve even opened completely.
No scientific data to add, but this question comes up with fair frequency and I’ve read a lot of these threads over the years.
It’s my observation that people who live in large cities tend to say that the buttons don’t work, but that people who live in smaller places say the buttons do work. (This is skewed somewhat by the newness of the building. The newer the building the more likely the buttons work as promised.)
This could mean that more usage breaks the buttons sooner or that people who live in larger cities are stereotypically impatient or that it’s harder to get things repaired promptly when there are so many broken buttons to deal with, which presumably have much lower priority than a stuck or non-functioning elevator.
I’ve lived in medium-sized cities for the most part and buttons always seem to work.
Have you chopped off anyone’s arm in the elevator doors? I’ve learned my lesson: don’t put my arm in the doors to catch a Japanese elevator. When they close, they mean business! It took Hulk strength to pull them open and free my arm. I think the electronic lady-voice was laughing at me.