Does the strong negative association of misusing an emergency exit significantly deter its use during an actual emergency?
Are emergencies so rare and unrehearsed that folks just don’t know how to react differently than during a non-emergency? Perhaps emergencies are they so rare that most people don’t go to the trouble of noting the locations of emergency exits before it is too late?
What is your theory on why folks don’t use available emergency exits when appropriate?
my theory is that most people don’t know the exit is there.
having an emergency announcement would help out a lot.
A couple of months ago at work, the fire alarm went off in the middle of the day. A couple of my co-workers started towards the main entrance/exit and found it absolutely clogged with people - there was a line of people 150 feet long waiting to get down the main (inner, non-fire-proof) staircase. So they went out one of the fire exits.
Turns out there was no fire, that the alarm system had simply malfunctioned, and both workers were criticized by building management for using the emergency exit (which they termed “tampering with fire equipment”) because the buidling people had to go to the trouble to re-set the trigger on that door.
So what if there was no fire? None of us knew there was no fire! The building managers did not know there was no fire! Only the firemen knew there was no fire! WTF? :mad: