Story here. What an awful thing to happen to a child. While the mother was paying for purchases, her 3-year old is playing near the escalator, her new coat gets caught and so does she when she tries to rescue the coat. She lost three fingers.
I post this gruesome story in the hopes that Doper parents will err on the side of caution for their children. Safety measures can’t prevent all accidents, and little fingers are especially prone to damage.
Escalators are dangerous IMO. Back when my daughter was a child, we were enjoying an outing to Disney MGM. We took an escalator to the Nickelodeon studio and on the way up, her sneaker got caught between the stair tread and the side railing (there’s a gap there that for some reason was wide enough to suck in the side of the shoe). I was trying to figure out how to get her foot out of the sneaker when it came loose. Some very tense moments there, I can tell you. 
I found this stats website that says there’s about 1 escalator death per year (figure 6).
One hopes they’d be doing the same if the kids were playing around at the top of a flight of stairs instead of an escalator - note that the accident occurred on the top floor of the store.
In all situations, really. We tend to get complacent and assume that proper maintenance is being done and all safeguards are in place.
My cousin is without three of the toes on one of his feet because of an escalator incident with an untied shoelace more than thirty years ago. Not watching your small children near an escalator, or getting on one without making sure that you’re not dragging anything that could get caught up in the works is a recipe for disaster. I avoid the things like the plague, myself.
There’s an emergency stop button at the bottom of every escalator. Obviously, if you don’t know the child is in trouble, you can’t do anything. But when you do recognize trouble developing, hit that (or yell for someone closer to hit it), rather than fiddle with the moving machine.
Also, I doubt that safeguards can be devised that would make an elevator child-safe. Even when stopped, it’s a steep metal staircase. Supervision is the only reliable protection.
Sad.
You know, before I had kids I used to think leashes for kids were barbaric. Now I might consider using them.
So, basically you are more likely to be killed by lightening, way more likely to be killed by a tornado, and WAY WAY more likely to be killed by just about anything else.
Huh. Brodie was right.
When I was 5, I was wearing shorts and sat down on the escalator steps while going down. The damn thing pinched off a hunk of skin from the backside of one of my thighs. I was screaming and terrified. My mom still drug me through the damn store to get her shopping done.
My two nephews are terrified of escalators - I wonder if their parents told them horror stories about what can happen.
And I’m amused that a poster named Sailboat is posting about escalator safety. Where’s Schooner?
That site, however, does not mention how many injuries are caused by escalators. The little girl in the article wouldn’t show up in those stats, because she was injured, not killed. It’s possible that there are lots of escalator injuries every year but very few of them are fatal.
Where is it located, generally? Is it between the up & down stairs or off to the side? Is it usually marked?
I didn’t know about the off button until this thread. What should I look for next time I see one?
Generally there is a button on the “outside” of the handrail at the top and the bottom. The ones I’m looking at right now have the button on the right side, just to the outside of the handrail. It’s red, you can’t miss it.
Perhaps the tornado, but I don’t know about death by weight loss.
And how many people are injured but not killed by lightning, tornados, storms, cars, exploding barney dolls…
Life is dangerous, but escalators are WAY down on the list of things to actually WORRY about.
Sure be careful around em. And stairs. And slick floors. Anything mechanical. Anything big. Anything sharp. Anything operated by humans. Anything that moves or could move. Anything hot. Anything cold. Anything with germs. Pretty much anything period.
Never heard of anorexia I take it?
I knew somebody who had it…holy crap is all I can say regarding that disease.
This is why I always run up (or down) escalators as if they’re regular stairs (as long as there’s no one in front of me). I want to get off as quickly as possible.