Going Up?

I was wondering today just how many people die whilst riding an elevator. A slightly morbid idea, I admit, but surely I'm not the only one to have ever considered that question? At any rate, I decided to look it up. And here's what I found:



"Incidents involving elevators and escalators kill about 30 and seriously injure about 17,000 people each year in the United States, according to data provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

The Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries reported 244 deaths in the 12 years 1992-2003 – about 20 per year. Of these, 173 involved work on or near elevators and 68 of those killed were elevator passengers – people entering or riding in elevators while at work."

Anyone who's ever had the misfortune of watching the Dutch film "De Lift" will probably think the following is tragically unspectacular, but how exactly did those events happen?

Well...

- Deaths among passengers using elevators while at work (1992-2001) -

Let's look at this more closely shall we:

1) "Falls" include mainly falls into elevator shafts. Almost half of those occurred when an elevator door opened and there was no elevator car.

Let's backtrack here for a second. The elevator door opened and there was NO ELEVATOR! I always assumed the Doctor Drake Ramoray elevator episode was too absurd to be plausible, but clearly it has happened more than just the fictional once. Maybe elevator designers would do well to consider the concept of fail-safe systems?!?

2) The “caught in-between” and “struck by” deaths often involved getting caught in the elevator door. Mostly it's a piece of clothing that gets stuck(I've always known ties are dangerous!) but almost half of the incidents involved people's heads getting trapped.

BAM.

If you're thinking about taking the stairs or the elevator, you're no better off apparently, because there are quite a few reports of injuries caused by escalators that suddenly decided to speed up or... even better... REVERSE their direction of movement.

If Hollywood is dumb enough to spend money on films about Snakes on a Plane, after this report, surely it's only a matter of time before the next Killer Escalator blockbuster? ;-)