StarDestroyer.Net BBS

This first video was very famous in China last week. Watch at your own risk since it shows the last seconds of a womans life.
She managed to save her kid though.
This video is not something I would normally post here, but wait.

It gets a lot weirder than that.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d72_1437910017

It turns out her family decided to show off her dead body right next to the offending escalator, to protest the inadequate security or something. The situation... well the situation quickly escalated and mall security guards dragged the dead body from the coffin to have it removed from the mall.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=545_1438534394

Um... before I click through to that, I'm presuming her body was hideously mangled by said escalator innards. Be kind to the rest of us - do they actually show said mangled body or not? It seems polite to be explicit about that BEFORE people toss their lunch all over their keyboards.

I saw the raw footage with her getting sucked into the gears despite two people trying to pull her out - that didn't show any gore. Actually seeing her afterward, though... not sure I want to see that.

They don't.

The second video does not show gore as far as I can tell. She was wrapped in a yellow bag. I only saw her upper body.

I always had a bit of fear of those escalators in my childhood. I shudder a bit seeing how that was justified.

This is what happens when someone with a job stops giving a fuck I suppose.

Or just forgets to do something important related to safety - maybe they were tired, or distracted... I'm not conversant with the details of how this came to happen.

I was afraid of escalators as a kid, too. Still cautious about them as an adult.

What jumped out at me was no one went for the emergency stop button (assuming what the small square next to the escalator was, roughly where it would be on an escalator in the US).

Darmalus wrote:What jumped out at me was no one went for the emergency stop button (assuming what the small square next to the escalator was, roughly where it would be on an escalator in the US).

No one thought about it because it happened so fast. One moment everything's normal and the next moment the floor plate is collapsing under that poor woman and she's trying to push her child clear. Then she's gone. It's over in a little more than five seconds.

A lot of people are completely unaware of the emergency stop buttons on escalators.

Or, as noted, heat of the moment.

The first thing the bystanders did was pull the child clear after the mom threw the kid forward. Then they tried to hold on to her. Grabbing her arms probably was a more natural reaction than trying to remember there was a stop button.

Darmalus wrote:What jumped out at me was no one went for the emergency stop button (assuming what the small square next to the escalator was, roughly where it would be on an escalator in the US).

I am not sure if this was a joke or not, because they have such weird attitudes sometimes in china, but I read that there was a big red stop button, but it had been removed as it offended people for reminding them of the japanese flag.

I think it was a joke though.

Either way as broom said a lot of people don't think clearly in such situations. And even when they did they don't know about the stop button. Like I just found out about the button in that post. I always assumed that button was just a regular stop you use to shut it down for maintenance.

Darmalus wrote:What jumped out at me was no one went for the emergency stop button (assuming what the small square next to the escalator was, roughly where it would be on an escalator in the US).

I don't actually see a clear e-stop on there, though it is difficult to tell. In fact, and this is just anecdotal, I've noticed that with new buildings in my area e-stops are usually on the side of the railing mostly out of view. On older escalators in my area they are mounted right next to the railing facing away from the escalator, making them very visible and are usually outlined in yellow. They are more concealed on the newer ones, nicer to look at to be sure but less likely to be used.

However the escalators in my area usually have solid platforms at the top and bottom that continue directly onto the main floor. I've never seen one with panels that could fall inward if loose as the panels in the video do.

Imperial528 wrote:

Darmalus wrote:What jumped out at me was no one went for the emergency stop button (assuming what the small square next to the escalator was, roughly where it would be on an escalator in the US).

I don't actually see a clear e-stop on there, though it is difficult to tell. In fact, and this is just anecdotal, I've noticed that with new buildings in my area e-stops are usually on the side of the railing mostly out of view. On older escalators in my area they are mounted right next to the railing facing away from the escalator, making them very visible and are usually outlined in yellow. They are more concealed on the newer ones, nicer to look at to be sure but less likely to be used.

However the escalators in my area usually have solid platforms at the top and bottom that continue directly onto the main floor. I've never seen one with panels that could fall inward if loose as the panels in the video do.

I've worked in industrial areas or had business in them the majority of my life, so I'm probably more aware emergency equipment than most, easy to forget that.

The only escalator I've seen disassembled had top panels, but it was also much wider than the supports were spaced. The panel would need to fold in half to fall in like it did in the video.

While I was away in Wisconsin I thought I heard something in passing about a Chinese worker getting his foot amputated in an escalator... perhaps there is some deficiency in design? Modern escalators in other places did not achieve their current safety overnight, after all, and they're still not perfect. Could there be some old or deficient designs at fault here?