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Normal treadmills have a safety limit switch that disengages the motor when it senses an obstruction. Many years ago I was at the gym and a exercise ball got l

Normal treadmills have a safety limit switch that disengages the motor when it senses an obstruction. Many years ago I was at the gym and a exercise ball got loose, jammed it up, and the guy fell off. After removing the ball the treadmill didn’t resume operation. You can see in the video the peloton jogs the motor in an attempt to free the obstruction. I presume the initial feature is to unjam a off track belt.

jimbob45 5y ago
Is that not required by law? Surely the engineers thought about this scenario and advised management to include a safety limit switch. Did management just ignore the engineers? This seems like another Ford Pinto where the company decided it was cheaper to settle the lawsuits than fix the product.
- bdibs 5y ago
  "Move fast and break things." Edit: I didn’t mean to offend, or to be morbid. I was making a point about how that particular mindset often doesn’t lead to products that care about “boring” things like safety or long term reliability.
- HenryBemis 5y ago
  I fear that some engineer(s) probably said at some point: what if a puppy/toddler is grabbed/pinched/pulled underneath? At which moment the product director got a mini heart-attack, sensed his/her bonus was at stake, and immediately asked the engineer(s) to be transferred to other projects. I have a favorie Dilbert for such cases: https://dilbert.com/strip/1998-04-10 https://dilbert.com/strip/1998-04-10 "Not a team player"
formerly_proven 5y ago
> You can see in the video the peloton jogs the motor in an attempt to free the obstruction. I presume the initial feature is to unjam a off track belt. Which seems like an incredible misfeature to me. You can see how quickly it gets going from a standstill two or three times in the video - even _if_ someone were on the treadmill (and not under it), that's exactly not the behavior you want.

jimbob45 5y ago

Is that not required by law? Surely the engineers thought about this scenario and advised management to include a safety limit switch. Did management just ignore the engineers? This seems like another Ford Pinto where the company decided it was cheaper to settle the lawsuits than fix the product.

bdibs 5y ago
"Move fast and break things." Edit: I didn’t mean to offend, or to be morbid. I was making a point about how that particular mindset often doesn’t lead to products that care about “boring” things like safety or long term reliability.
HenryBemis 5y ago
I fear that some engineer(s) probably said at some point: what if a puppy/toddler is grabbed/pinched/pulled underneath? At which moment the product director got a mini heart-attack, sensed his/her bonus was at stake, and immediately asked the engineer(s) to be transferred to other projects. I have a favorie Dilbert for such cases: https://dilbert.com/strip/1998-04-10 https://dilbert.com/strip/1998-04-10 "Not a team player"

formerly_proven 5y ago

> You can see in the video the peloton jogs the motor in an attempt to free the obstruction. I presume the initial feature is to unjam a off track belt. Which seems like an incredible misfeature to me. You can see how quickly it gets going from a standstill two or three times in the video - even _if_ someone were on the treadmill (and not under it), that's exactly not the behavior you want.