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"An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You should never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. So
by mikepurvis 5y ago
"An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You should never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience."
- wlesieutre 5y agoI know it’s a joke but if the failure mode is “brakes don’t work” on an escalator full of people, it is much worse than stairs
- mikepurvis 5y agoVery true— I would definitely imagine that escalator brakes are a thing that fail closed in the absence of power, but clearly there are failure modes (probably a rare confluence of multiple concurrent failures) where this kind of thing can happen, such as that incident in Rome in 2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1SjQfwLieU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1SjQfwLieU
- wlesieutre 5y agoAnother in China in 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADb57ysvCbU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADb57ysvCbU https://coconuts.co/hongkong/news/engineer-gets-2-months-in-jail-following-escalator-incident/ https://coconuts.co/hongkong/news/engineer-gets-2-months-in-... (misleading URL, actually suspended sentence) Rather that than an falling elevator, but it still doesn't look fun