#1. It was a front loading machine. Which means, if it were to stop mid cycle, an entire washer full of water would come rushing out onto the floor. I don’t forsee any clothes-washing emergencies (except the obvious, “help, my babies in the washer!!”) that would require such a drastic measure.
#2. In a laundrymat you’ve got the option of a front loading or top loading washer (at least, every one I’ve ever been to in my 25 years). The top loading ones can be stopped at any time. If you’re that concerned that you might have to break into the machine for whatever laundry emergency you forsee, use a top loader.
Having a means of shutting off power and releasing the door is extremely dangerous and certainly carries far greater risks than that of someone being trapped inside.
When a fully loaded machine is on spin, that drum takes some time to slow down, even if it is one with a brake system.
Having the means to open the door during this time could be lethal.
Doors are safety interlocked electrically with the water level sensor and the drum rotation sensor, and you need power on to unlock them too, pulling the plug would prevent you from opening the door.
The door is locked by you as you close it, no need for power there, but then it is latched internally as soon as water sensor switch is made by a solenoid, it cannot be opened without power, or a maintenance person comes and lifts of the covers.
Serious? Yes. ALL machinery for public/private use should have appropriate failsafes and cut-outs.
Sympathetic to this woman and her common-sense defying stupidity? Not in the slightest.
Would this woman have a case against the proprietors? I dunno, IANA lawyer, if I were to sit on a jury deciding such a case I would be, um, disinclined to see her benefit from her stultifying actions.
My own-front loading washing machine starts its cycle when a switch is pulled out, the cycle can be interrupted at any time by depressing this switch. I’ve never had a small child stuck in my washer mid-cycle to know if I am grateful for this mechanism, but it seems a reasonable failsafe, and is one that I have used for other reasons.
Commercial interests may be loath to include such a failsafe if it allowed customers to interrupt the cycle, open the door and flood the place. But clearly being able to open the door mid-cycle and being able to interrupt the cycle are two different things.
As was observed above, this is an unusual, but not an unheard-of, incident.
I haven’t been to a Laundromat in ages, but we have a front loader at home. For the first ten minutes, you can stop the cycle and add a garment. The washer does not fill up with water immediately, it rolls one way - a little water is added, it rolls the other way - a little more water is added. In the first ten minutes or so, there is not enough water inside to flood anything. Plenty of time to stop the machine and get someone out.
There is also a pause/cancel button. I’ve never used it, but I assume that when it is pushed all action stops and the machine is drained.
I don’t know what you mean – it’s not a question of what I want; if it was I’d like to live in a world with no stupid people.
Anyway…
I think that at the very least the power and progress through the cycle should be interruptable, I don’t insist that the customers then be able to open the doors and flood the place, but there ought to be a means to do such, say a key carried by a supervisor.
Most laundromats I have been to do not have anyone working in them, other than the guy who comes to fill up the change machine and collect the quarters.
And I can only imagine the flood of lawsuits if little Jimmy were to open a machine mid cycle and get scalded with hot water.
The point is no matter what failsafes we put in, human stupidity will always trump them. It simply becomes a matter of how many failsafes are practically needed in a situation, and that is obviously debatable.
Not once have I suggested that a machine, stopped mid-cycle, should be openable by the patrons, your example of a poor scalded little Jimmy being one reason why this may not necessarily be a good idea.
But the capacity to turn something off is not some ooh-think-of-expense, the-worlds-gone-mad, nanny-state-inspired rocket science, it’s just common sense.
To retrofit millions of washing machines at god knows what expense because one stupid bitch put her kid in the washer might very well indicate that the world has gone mad.
No, you’re getting your tenses mixed up, I’m talking about what should have been, some design decision was taken to not provide a mechanism to disable the machine. Such a mechanism should have been fitted in the first instance (and possibly was, then retro-removed (at what cost?)), not only to guard against the abjectly stupid but for more mundane scenarios, say a machine catching fire, or a machine becoming unanchored and careening around the laundromat during its spin-cycle.
I repeat, an idiot might suggest that potentially dangerous machinery does not require a method to disengage it, any takers?
