4 ms·
I think there’s a lot going on in that 30x stat and I wish the citation was better: - most elevator accidents occur during maintenance, which I assume is simil
by nicklecompte 6y ago
I think there’s a lot going on in that 30x stat and I wish the citation was better:
- most elevator accidents occur during maintenance, which I assume is similar for paternosters. So the fact that elevators are seemingly safer for passengers might not statistically factor in much to the overall safety record: e.g. paternosters could be 1000x as dangerous for passengers but only 5x as dangerous for technicians
- relatedly, I would suspect most paternosters are better maintained than most elevators and less likely to have a dangerous mechanical failure
- and as the commenters stated, passengers are likely to be more alert when using a paternoster (no accidents like stepping in to an empty shaft)
Regardless I suspect you are correct that a well-maintained paternoster is at least hundreds of times more dangerous for passengers than a well-maintained elevator. As far as I can tell the stats given on Wikipedia don’t refute that (but I wish I knew more about their source).
- londons_explore 6y agoWhat injuries would be common on a paternoster?
- nicklecompte 6y agoI don’t think any injuries would be common and that paternosters are safer than stairs and escalators. Intuitively it seems that crushing accidents on the extremities would be quite a bit more likely than elevators, along with tripping accidents when entering/leaving the paternoster.
- bombcar 6y agoThe obvious one (getting half in the car and getting crushed) is likely relatively uncommon - as it should be possible to make the engine weak enough that it can’t do major harm.
- cma 6y agoWouldn't the momentum of the system alone do that?
- frosted-flakes 6y agoIt's not always perfecrly balanced though. The motor needs to handle the case where loads of people are going up but nobody is going down.
- nicklecompte 6y ago> make the engine weak enough that it can’t do major harm. This doesn’t make sense to me. Outside of sensors that can automatically shut the motor off, the motor is definitely strong enough to do major damage in an unlikely crushing incident - it could easily sever or otherwise destroy a limb without even slowing down the carriage. The motor in any elevator has to be extremely strong: it’s not like paternosters slow down due to strain when people enter them. To put it a bit gruesomely, the motor doesn’t notice the difference between lifting a 100kg passenger or applying the same amount of shear force to a trapped arm.
- Archelaos 6y agoIn 2019, there was an accident at Stuttgart Rathaus in which an employee suffered a broken bone, according to city officials, but was still able to see a doctor on his own. Further details about the accident are not known. There were parliamentary moves to ban paternosters in Germany some time ago. However, the Bundesrat prevented this at the time. Later, operation was re-regulated with stricter safety requirements. This then mainly concerned the installation of all kinds of signs about the correct way to get on and off and to remain calm during the turnaround if you missed the last exit. Personally, I would guess that most accidents are falls from getting on too late going down or too early going up.
- askvictor 6y agoFalling down the shaft when there's no carriage at your floor
- Groxx 6y agoWhile definitely a risk: this seems extremely easy to prevent. Put a plate dangling below each carriage, so there's no human-size gap between them. There are still moving things with small gaps though, without non-moving times, so some number of injuries seems unavoidable. Given enough time, you can always discover an inattentive person.
- tom_mellior 6y ago> Put a plate dangling below each carriage, so there's no human-size gap between them. I've seen a few paternosters in action and just checked a few random YouTube videos and I'm fairly sure that that pretty much all of them have plates between carriages. Your parent's concern appears unfounded.
- askvictor 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternoster_lift#:~:text=In%202012%2C%20an%2081-year-old%20man%20was%20killed%20when%20he%20fell%20into%20the%20shaft%20of%20a%20paternoster%20in%20the%20Dutch%20city%20of%20The%20Hague.%5B12%5D%20Elderly%20people%2C%20disabled%20people%2C%20and%20children%20are%20most%20vulnerable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternoster_lift#:~:text=In%20...
- tom_mellior 6y agoThe source for that doesn't say that the man fell between carriages. There's not enough detail to tell what happened. But yes, this particular paternoster might have been a bad apple.