It’s amazing what the so-called safety inspectors let slide. We have an elevator in our district because we have to be totally accessible for disabled students, but it also doubles as a light freight elevator. That means I have to use it because I convey tech equipment between the first and second floors.
When I first got here, the head of maintenance told me to have my phone or walkie with me every time I use it because it breaks down so much and doesn’t have a phone on it. He told me a 2nd shift custodian was trapped on it an entire night because no one was around to hear him and he didn’t have his phone with him to make a call.
As a child, I would take the bus with my mother downtown to the big department stores. This was years before the mall was invented. This one department store, HR Blocks, had eight floors and it had this very scary elevator with glass doors, so you saw all the mechanisms that made it work and saw everything between floors I would cower in the rear so I wouldn’t fall, or get bit by the huge levers that opened the door.
The next store’s elevator had an elevator operator who took you to your floor.
Regarding the possibility of an elevator actually plummeting, rather than the getting stuck in the door type accident, I’ve always had a picture of a safety mechanism in mind. The idea is some kind of spring at the bottom of the shaft, so that when the car reaches the bottom of the shaft the acceleration won’t be sudden. Is this sort of safety mechanism used anywhere?
I’ve seen the pit under the elevators in my building. Yes there are springs. But it seems implausible they’d be long enough to make the deceleration from a full speed plummet to a dead stop tolerable in the short stroke available.
I think one of the main protective devices is flanges that spring out if the elevator suddenly moves quickly downward, and brakes them against the sides. I used to work on the 42nd floor of a building, and I thought about that many mornings while riding to work in the elevator.
Don’t get on or off while the elevator is still moving! (Duh!)
Unless you’re using an infamous Paternoster Elevator (Wiki page), which runs on continuous play. Who here has seen, or used, or at least even heard of these? When a car comes by, you just hop in, and when you reach your desired floor, just hop off. A bit of dexterity is encouraged, as passengers otherwise got chopped in half from time to time.
Here is one video showing these in action in the first 30 seconds and some more starting at about 1:38
You can search YouTube for several other videos too.
You can even ride a car over the top or down under the bottom in the basement.
Allegedly named “Paternoster” because the chain of cars resemble a chain of rosary beads as used when reciting The Lords Prayer. Right. That’s a rich euphemism. Who here can think of a more realistic reason they were called that?
Machine_elf that is funny. How do you move an elevator if you have it lockout-tagout. And many times it is necessary to put an elevator in inspection to move it to make repairs. And after the repairs are completed the only way to check the work is to run the elevator. When I worked for Macy’s I would put tags ,10"X14" across the call buttons, barriers in front of the car opening. Still people would move the barriers lift the signs and try and use the elevator or escalator. And when I would complain to the safety department their answer was "well did I have it lockedout tagged out? When I would tell the it was ot locked out because I was testing it they did not care if someone got hurt or not. I have many stories about stupid employees and customers.
There are springs in the bottom of an elevator shaft. If the cables were cut and the safety cables were cut and the elevator were to fall a large distance it would still be a major jolt. But a cable elevator that is having an equipment failure and brake failure at the same time will fall up most of the time unless heavely loaded.
They used to have one in my old Uni. We thought they were great – you never have to wait, and were just fun to ride. Over time you get more and more cocky, and frequently jump up or down into a car at the last possible second.
We would tease the freshers (1st year students) by joking that they were unsafe or that the cars go upside-down at the top of the building (they don’t).
Many years later I read that that paternoster had been removed because, it turns out, they are actually super dangerous, with essentially no mechanism at all to automatically stop the cars in the event of someone getting stuck between floors . Furthermore, there had only ever been a handful of paternosters in the world, so it was a pretty special thing to have got to see and ride one.
Something was very wrong with that elevator. Either the inspector did not know what his job was or the mechanic overrode a few things. The only time an elevator should leave the floor with the doors open is when it is in inspection.
And I do not see how using just door sensors would be legal. I requires at least 2 conditions being met. The door latch making up and closing the door switch and the Latch locking into place locking the door closed.
I used to work at a good-sized airport near a large Mennonite community. Think Amish-lite & definitely rural. It was common to see people from childhood through middle age at that airport who were encountering escalators for the first time in their lives. Hilarity often ensued. Fortunately the worst injury I ever saw was a skinned knee.
I cannot imagine the carnage if those folks ever encountered a paternoster.
O’Hare airport, being an international destination, often has travelers from less developed parts of the world who have never before encountered escalators, moving sidewalks, elevators, or self-flushing toilets and on top of the Amish/Mennonite culture shock, don’t speak English or another common-in-the-US language the could be used to explain those marvels or how to use them.
A combination of pantomime, instructions in pictures, reassurance, and patience usually solves the problems involved.
Well, I did say “a long train of contrivances.” It was no accident and the bad guy had jimmied with the system to make the doors open. Being Hollywood, of course, I am dubious about the verisimilitude.
I used to work at a place where the freight elevator wouldn’t work at all when it rained.
There was a solution. Someone had to go up to the little shed on the roof that housed the elevator mechanism. With a 2 x 4. That person had to push (slam,really) in the contacts with the board to make the elevator run. It would stop when the board was released.
To make sure the timing was right, someone on the lower floors would yell GO or STOP. Which worked fine if the elevator was on the 4th, 5th or 6th floor. But if it was on a lower floor we would need to put someone on every other floor just to relay the verbal commands.
We tried using walkie-talkies, but they were “push to talk” and slamming the board against the elevator contacts was a two-handed job. So then we needed another person up on the roof, and the push to talk feature still gave us timing problems because the STOP action had to be close to instantaneous to get the cab level with the floor.
Yelling STOP and GO worked better.
I know the world is a better place now than it was when I was young, but sometimes I get nostalgic for the pre-HR, pre-regulation workplaces of my youth.
. Furthermore, there had only ever been a handful of paternosters in the world, so it was a pretty special thing to have got to see and ride one.