28 ms·

The Door Close Button

329 points by ecliptik 4y ago

eps 4y ago
The depth of this article is really impressive.
acadapter 4y ago
The "door close" button might be an override to the "long open" button in some elevators. Then, it might appear as unconnected for the regular use case.
- mankyd 4y ago
  That's basically what the article says: elevator doors (in the US) have a minimum open time, as specified by the ADA, and try to close as soon as this minimum time is reached. The close button can't override the minimum, so generally it seems like the button does nothing. Meanwhile, some elevators (hospitals are the example given) do hold the door open longer than the minimum, and the close button works in those places, per their testing.
reaperducer 4y ago
Bottom line: "Door close" is not universally useful to all people. On some elevators, it's programmed to actually close the doors for a regular passenger. On some elevators, it's programmed to only respond to firefighters, janitors, or other people who have the ability to put the elevator into a local control mode. It varies from building to building. Everything else is a placebo.
- mikestew 4y ago
  The "bottom line" is that such poorly-researched, context-free articles are written to get you to click (see the NYT example), and then something contextual to NYC (crosswalk buttons) get generalized to the whole nation. And then, true or not, people think elevator close buttons don't do anything.
- mankyd 4y ago
  That's not at all what this well-researched article finds.
- martopix 4y ago
  The article clearly states that the "placebo" theory is baseless, so I'm not sure what your "bottom line" that closes with "everything else is a placebo" comes from. What is "everything else" exactly?
jgrahamc 4y ago
It's very common in Europe for there to be no Door Close button.
- 8organicbits 4y ago
  I was very confused by the article and started to doubt myself before I realized the author forgot about the world outside the US. It's pretty easy to find photos of these elevators. https://duckduckgo.com/?va=t&t=ha&q=elevator+with+no+close+button+&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?va=t&t=ha&q=elevator+with+no+close+b...
  - jcrawfordor 4y ago
    I did some research into European elevator codes and got the impression that depending on country there was either DO/DC or a single Door Hold button - but it seems like the labeling on DH might be identical to DO on some elevators which creates sort of a philosophical question as to if they're really different things. Still, you can find elevators with DO, DH, and DC it seems, and in that case I have no idea what the difference is between DO and DH. It's kind of hard to cover this stuff in Europe as the degree of variation from country to country is pretty high, so pretty much any rule you state won't apply in some major city that people will bring up. Perhaps I should have been more explicit, but in general I hope the discussion of ADA and the ASME code makes it clear that I'm talking about the US. Actually the ASME code mostly applies directly to Canada as well as a separate but harmonized code.
- vultour 4y ago
  It's also very common in Europe that the door close button actually works as one expects.
jaywalk 4y ago
I had always wondered where the "placebo" myth came from, because I've been in so many elevators where the door close button obviously works. Great article!
sbradford26 4y ago
Just need an * on the button. Close doors when all other parameters are satisfied. * * The minimum door opening time parameter might be the standard door closing time parameter
ortusdux 4y ago
The elevator in a building I lived in had a feature, presumably for emergency responders, where holding the door close and a floor number simultaneously for a few seconds would take you directly to that floor. I believe that method has been replaced with a standardized keyed override. The trick did come in handy once when a bratty kid pushed all the buttons as a prank.
- polpo 4y ago
  I'm not sure where I learned it, but I've found that in many older elevators in the US, pressing door close simultaneously with the floor number will also get the doors to close immediately.
MDWolinski 4y ago
Personally, don’t really care or use the door close button. However, would so much love it if I press a floor by accident, the second press deselects it.
- felideon 4y ago
  Have never tried it, but apparently double click to undo works. [source: https://twitter.com/buritica/status/1598518847018979329?s=20 https://twitter.com/buritica/status/1598518847018979329?s=20]
  - jrockway 4y ago
    Those buttons look like they're in some place other than the US (I think we have two types of buttons here, but I'm not enough of an elevator nerd to explain why). In Japan I've seen the double-click to undo pretty much everywhere. The door close buttons also work. I could be wrong but I think the ADA was a little overzealous. 99% of the time there isn't someone with low mobility trying to walk over to the elevator. The 1% of the time someone is having trouble, I've never seen them pound the door close button; they hold their hand to block the light curtain until they get in. (When the elevator starts beeping and doing the slow-close thing, that's when I take my hand out. I've never seen anyone's hand get crushed in the elevator, but you can tell it wants blood.)
    - SoftTalker 4y ago
      In any modern elevator, the door closing force is only enough to move the doors. Any normally-strong person could hold the door open indefinitely.
      - jrockway 4y ago
        Haha, I'm sure that's true, I'm just unnaturally scared.
- djmips 4y ago
  I've heard this is works in Japan. Can anyone confirm?
eCa 4y ago
In my building (northern Europe) the doors are open for quite a while (maybe ten seconds). The door-close button closes immediately on push, as long as nothing/no-one is entering/leaving the elevator. If it didn’t, I’d use the elevator even less than I do. Stairs to/from the third floor is just about the same time as the elevator.
- Reason077 4y ago
  Right. Throughout Europe and the UK, the "door close" button usually does exactly that. Unless something is blocking the door, it will close the door immediately. It's in the US and Canada that the placebo, non-working "door close" button seems to be the norm, due to regulations in those countries. So why have a "door close" button at all in the US? I guess because most elevator designs/manufacturers have their origins in Europe. ThyssenKrupp (Germany), Kone (Finland), Schindler (Germany), etc. And rather than design a different panel for the European and North American markets, they just have one common design but with the software configured differently.
  - klausa 4y ago
    > So why have a "door close" button at all in the US? If only the article you're commenting on described in detail a secondary, safety-critical function of that button, maybe we wouldn't have to resort to this kind of speculation. Oh well. Maybe next time!
  - windows2020 4y ago
    The article explains that door close may function in some scenarios and special modes, like independent service mode. Maintenance put one elevator into this mode to help us with moving in. The elevator stayed open at the floor until door close was pressed and held long enough for the doors to close at which time it became eligible to move to the specified floor.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > So why have a “door close” button at all in the US? As explicitly stated in the article: (1) Its a legal and functional requirement for fire service mode, when automatic door closing is completely disabled. (2) Some users (the article specifically tested hospitals, based on experience of very long normal door hold times there that would suggest their should be a window between the minimum and normal hold time) do, in fact, configure minimum and normal hold time with a window which allows the button to operate. It’s not a “non-functional button”. Its a button which is functional, but where the variable it controls is often configured by users to have no range of variability.
dcow 4y ago
My anecdotal experience matches the conclusion… that internet-urban myths are born of poor regurgitation of glorified content marketing; and also that most door close buttons work after a minimum time threshold. Interesting to learn it’s part of the ADA. Neat newsletter, I subscribed.
runxel 4y ago
This site would so much improve by using `background-attachment: fixed;` in its CSS. I'm getting a headache here.
- humanistbot 4y ago
  I mean, the site is named "Computers are Bad," which fits.
- philbarr 4y ago
  you're right. Open dev tools and add it yourself. :)
  - runxel 4y ago
    Oh, no worries. I did! :) Stylus makes the internet so much better.
- ryandrake 4y ago
  Not only that, but the text is a tiny sliver of horizontal space, with that annoying background filler everywhere else. It's so bad I had to break out the ruler just to be sure: My monitor is 24 inches across, and at my default text size, the content of that site is 6 inches across: 3/4 of the screen wasted. This web developer needs a paddlin'.
mc32 4y ago
The lesson here is that often these "serious" programs are still entertainment and are not rigorous and you should always retain some skepticism and not believe what they say verbatim. This includes things like Myth Busters and so on. I'm not saying they are lying on purpose, but they have schedules and expectations to fulfill, so they may stray from time to time.
LeonM 4y ago
There is another reason for the close door button: so that the manufacturer or service mechanic have something to blame. In my building the elevators were brand new (less than a few months old) and were constantly out of order. The service mechanic was called in time after time, he would arrive, run diagnostics, find that nothing was wrong, then reset the control system and leave. After the 10th time or so, the building manager demanded to have the entire system replaced under warranty. The manufacturer told us: there is nothing wrong with the lift, but you guys are constantly pressing the close door button, this breaks the lift! So obviously our abuse of the lift was not going to be covered under warranty. We called their bluff we had the mechanic disable the close button. The lift still broke. A week later the entire control system was replaced (under warranty) and the lift has functioned normally ever since, though they never enabled the close door button again... :-(
- klyrs 4y ago
  The idea that pressing the door-close button would constitute "abuse" is laughable. If it's actually a self-destruct button by design, it should be locked out by default.
- remram 4y ago
  > constantly pressing the close door button, this breaks the lift I'm not sure I understand the argument? Why does this break the elevator? Why would a built-in button crashing the elevator not be considered a fault?
  - LeonM 4y ago
    > Why does this break the elevator? It doesn't > Why would a built-in button crashing the elevator not be considered a fault? The manufacturer was trying to get out of a warranty claim, hoping the customer was naive enough to believe their story.
    - aliasxneo 4y ago
      > The manufacturer was trying to get out of a warranty claim, hoping the customer was naive enough to believe their story To be fair, I worked in the service industry for many years (as a controls technician), and I had many co-workers who intentionally set up long cons like this to stay busy. They would come up with equally outlandish reasons for why they needed to keep going back and upper management was mostly clueless as to how ridiculous they were.
renlo 4y ago
> In other words, there may be some period during which pushing the door close button causes the door to close, but it will be after the end of the ADA-required minimum door time. The button mashers were right all along! I'd always thought it was futile to keep pressing the close-door button, but it sounds like if you "mash" it you're more likely to hit that sweet spot where the button is active.
- germinalphrase 4y ago
  Sounds like they should light up the close door button after the ADA required time to indicate when the button is active (rather than the status quo in which the functionality is illegible).
goatkey 4y ago
For anyone reading this and intrigued by elevator inspections, I highly recommend The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead. It's a fun, fiction read!
gonehome 4y ago
I was recently in El Salvador and the hotel (Hyatt Centric San Salvador) had ThyssenKrupp elevators with door close buttons that actually worked! Presumably no ADA minimum times enforced there. And it was amazing! Well, as amazing as such a thing can be - to push a button and have immediate feedback/response (it also felt like the doors even closed faster than they do here). Pushing a button and having it do nothing is one of those frustrating little indignities, it’s bad with software and it’s even worse in the real world.
- bentcorner 4y ago
  Some kind of feedback could probably help a lot. On a device with a screen you'd disable the button and maybe add some kind of countdown to show when you can press it. There's a bunch of ways to show this with physical buttons but I guess they'd all be varying amounts of non-cheap.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    This is one of those weird times where less feedback may be better because of human psychology. Letting people hammer on the button without feedback gives them something to kill time with and the wait is more palatable.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - jonny_eh 4y ago
    Or at least have the button light up, and stay lit, until the door is closed.
  - megablast 4y ago
    No. Having it close the doors when you press close the doors is what is wanted. Not a little light.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  In the 1990s I worked in a building in Chicago that had instant-response close buttons. It was nice.
alexpotato 4y ago
If you liked the original post, you will probably LOVE this DEFCON talk about elevator hacking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHf1vD5_b5I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHf1vD5_b5I It also gives a lot of fascinating information about elevators in general and specific operation modes. e.g. there is a "riot mode" where the elevator goes to every floor except the first (or ground in EU) floor aka to the lobby. The idea was that, during a riot, a luxury building in NYC would lock the stairwell access from the lobby but people could still take the elevator to the other floors to visit their neighbors etc
- schwartzworld 4y ago
  Sort of similar: elevators in Israel may be programmed to stop at every floor during the Sabbath, as riding the elevator is permitted according to the talmudic definition of "work", but summoning the elevator is not.
  - refactor_master 4y ago
    Except if it’s summoned by a kosher switch? ;) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KosherSwitch https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KosherSwitch
    - calgarymicro 4y ago
      >The basic idea is that the switch activates only sometimes, and only after a delay, making the action indirect and uncertain. Several Orthodox poskim have ruled as thus makes the device permissible for general consumer use.[5][6] Others, however, have reached the opposite conclusion.[2] Wow. Well, loopholes are loopholes I guess.
    - omginternets 4y ago
      Surely, pushing a button frantically constitutes “work”.
  - delecti 4y ago
    I've always found it fascinating and delightful how Jewish people in particular seem to treat loopholes like that in their religion as features rather than bugs. Christians (the only other religion I've got much exposure to) seem to either ignore their rules entirely, or interpret them more according to a vague vibe of intent.
Dylan16807 4y ago
A crosswalk button that does nothing is a placebo even if that wasn't the original intent. The elevator button is more complicated but I think the typical uselessness combined with misleading label is enough to qualify. The reason it exists isn't placebo, but the way it's set up makes it a placebo, even if it's via negligence.
- D13Fd 4y ago
  The term "placebo" implies intent. So saying something is "a placebo even if that wasn't the original intent" is like saying something "is red even if it isn't that color."
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    It wasn't originally a color, but it rusted. People are being tricked by the presentation, and it's being left that way out of lack of caring. Negligence is a form of intent. Especially it's intent when new elevators are getting the same treatment.
DeathArrow 4y ago
Like many things in life, some door close buttons work, some not.
cynicalsecurity 4y ago
I wish the door close button worked as expected. It gives me distributing horror film vibes when it doesn't work and others come in.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bandyaboot 4y ago
I think the Door Close button should be able to override the minimum ADA wait time. What are we worried about? People intentionally closing the door while disabled people are trying to make their way to the elevator door? I expect that's a nearly non-existent problem.
- causi 4y ago
  People intentionally closing the door while disabled people are trying to make their way to the elevator door? I expect that's a nearly non-existent problem. People are assholes. Also, a lot of people would just get into the habit of hitting the door close button the moment they step on without even looking for anyone else.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- kayodelycaon 4y ago
  I've seen people hit the door close button immediately as an elevator arrived at a floor or immediately as they enter it, no matter who is waiting behind them. It doesn't work, but they try it anyway. If you allow the button to do that, quite a few people would abuse it. In my opinion, there are enough bad actors to justify preventing them from abusing the system.
  - account42 4y ago
    Perhaps that is due to them mistakenly thinking that there is a delay between pressing the button and the door closing (rather then a minimum time the door is open) so they might as well press it early.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    The solution is simple: have cameras in all the elevators in the city, all connected to an AI control system, which observes all the people using the elevators and their use of the buttons. The AI system determines which people are assholes abusing the door-close button, and ignores the button when they press it. As a bonus, it frequently ignores them if they're the only person requesting an elevator, and sometimes locks them in the elevator for a few minutes when they're riding alone, and then alters the video footage to hide this occurrence, so they look insane when they complain about it.
vultour 4y ago
What a pointlessly elaborate way of arriving at the conclusion that the button actually doesn't work. Sorry, but from the POV of the user one does not care whether it's the "elevator controller" blocking the input or the button is not connected at all. The end result is the same - you walk into the elevator, press the button, and nothing happens. Hitting an annoyed user with an anecdotal "actually if the door hold timer was longer the button would work just fine!!!" doesn't help in the slightest.
- bandyaboot 4y ago
  I take it as a push back against the mildly conspiratorial thinking that elevator companies left in an explicitly non-functioning button for the sake of giving people a sense of control.
- mynameisvlad 4y ago
  Did you… actually read the article? If you got “the button actually doesn’t work” out of the same article that I did, then one of us needs to take reading comprehension lessons.
- moron4hire 4y ago
  That's a bit like saying your computer's shutdown sequence "doesn't work" because it prioritizes ending processes gracefully before actually powering off the computer.
  - vultour 4y ago
    No, it's like having a computer that's already in the shutdown sequence and somebody puts a magical button in front of you and says if you press this it's going to turn the computer off. Then when you press it nothing changes because the computer is already shutting down waiting for the processes to stop.
DrewADesign 4y ago
Yeah I never really got why people made that claim. In my experience, the door close button works fine after some minimum amount of time. Elevators I've used that are primarily for folks with significant mobility issues or maybe where they're carrying a lot of stuff, like for a Hotel catering kitchen, seem to stay open a bit longer. In one hotel I used to get Zipcars from a lot, the elevator to the parking garage would stay open for like 30 seconds if you didn't hit the door close button. It was like that for well over a decade so I doubt it was just misconfigured. Elevators in professional or residential buildings that need to optimize for the number of trips just have a different use case, so the door closes much more quickly.
dhritzkiv 4y ago
Anecdotally, the near dozen or so elevators I've regularly used in Canada (both in residential and commercial settings) have had their Door Close button work as you'd expect: near instantly – no three-or-more second minimum imposed for the doors to be open.
- dpc050505 4y ago
  As a highrise window cleaner that worked in Victoria, Vancouver and Montreal I can tell you you got lucky.
adrianmonk 4y ago
Also, consider what would happen if door close buttons really did what people think they want: to close the door immediately, unilaterally, and without limitation. If elevators allowed that, then as soon as the doors started to open, a selfish elevator rider would think "sorry, you losers out there in the elevator lobby, I gotta get to floor 7 ASAP, so you can take the next one" and push the button. So common sense says the button is only going to let you fine tune how long the door stays open, not have complete control. So you shouldn't conclude from the fact that it doesn't give you complete control that it must not do anything.
- JoeAltmaier 4y ago
  That's a leap. The door will close in seconds anyway. The button is locked out until the minimum time has elapsed. The window between those two times is the only place the button could work. Is it 1 second? 2 seconds? So the door close button, by regulation, can do little or nothing
  - pflenker 4y ago
    The article mentions cases where this is not true - e.g. hospitals, where elevators are configured to stay open much longer than the minimum.
- halestock 4y ago
  I used to work in a building where the elevators operated this way, and riders sometimes DID push the close door button immediately, assuming there was no one waiting to go up and closing the door on people waiting.
- eknkc 4y ago
  The buttons work here in our office building and many other places. Some wait for the door to be fully open first and then allow immediate closing. That would solve your issue. Some do actually stop opening and close the doors halfway through. Never once seen someone do that. I mean if you are gonna be a dick, you can shove people out of the elevator anyway. No need for a button.
shadowgovt 4y ago
I love Radiolab as entertainment podcasting, but it's worth knowing that they're surface-skimming their topics and frequently make meaningful errors on the details. I recall vaguely a story they did about how it was hard to walk straight while blindfolded and how weird that was, and I immediately flashed back to a college professor demonstrating this in a controls theory class... But as a proof of how inaccuracy mounts in an open-loop control system, because that's actually entirely expected (the odds random error would sum consistently to zero is what would be weird and unexpected).
hairofadog 4y ago
True story: when I was in college I was at a crosswalk waiting for a walk signal, and two people walked up. One of them started pressing the walk button furiously, and she said, "It won't change unless you press it a bunch of times really fast." When the walk signal lit up about ten seconds later she said, "See?"
- crazygringo 4y ago
  Are you sure they weren't pranking you? I definitely would try to convince people of random incorrect technological things when I was younger (like high school). That sounds exactly like something I would have done...
ElectricSpoon 4y ago
A less known feature of some crosswalk buttons is that some have accessibility features. I've seen a few that were pointless when pressed due to automatic triggering. Long-press and you'll get longer time and an audible indicator while crossing.
- merlyn 4y ago
  In downtown Minneapolis, the whole of downtown is on computer controlled traffic light grid, so the crosswalk buttons don't change any of the timing of the traffic light grid. But on all the ADA upgraded intersections, the crosswalk buttons DO start announcing the count down time, and what intersection they are at. So, they do something, but they won't change the time it takes the light to actually change.
nemo44x 4y ago
I think I've noticed in Japan, people hit the door close button on the way out of the elevator if no one is standing outside to enter. Can anyone verify if this is etiquette in Japan? Are there other places that have certain etiquette that outsiders may not be aware of?
CM30 4y ago
Based on my experience, the door close button seems to work as expected at my office. Press the button, and the doors close much more quickly than they usually do. As for crossing buttons... generally they do work in the UK. It's just that if the crossing is in the middle of a normal road (read, where there's no reason for the lights to change automatically) it's required, whereas if the crossing is at a junction, it'll merely display the signal to cross whenever the lights would be set to change anyway.
- sushisource 4y ago
  The reference to crossing buttons not working I found particularly annoying because my experience here in Seattle is, except at the busiest intersections, you do in fact need to press the buttons, otherwise the crosswalk won't show the walking man for you, even if traffic is in fact stopped in the relevant direction. (Of course, the article points out this was meant to be only about NYC) Particularly obnoxiously, if you are even a millisecond late in pressing the button (traffic just got the red light), you won't get the walking man until the next cycle. Infuriating.
  - none_to_remain 4y ago
    It's funnier because you're not allowed to jaywalk in Seattle
pflenker 4y ago
We’re all obsessing here about the door close button while a surprisingly large number habe trouble understanding the up/down buttons. Surprisingly often, especially elderly people seem to think „if the elevator is currently above me, I have to push „down“ because I want it to go down to pick me up“.
- ammar2 4y ago
  How do you they know if the elevator is currently above them? Most elevators from my experience don't show the current floor they're on.
  - rascul 4y ago
    In my experiences, there's often an indicator above the elevator. Not always though, and I don't use elevators much.
  - dosethree 4y ago
    A lot of buildings down have floors under floor #1 so its always above you
  - kevincox 4y ago
    I've seen it fairly frequently in residential buildings in Toronto. Usually the main floor has a current floor indicator but often the other floors don't. Minor cost savings probably?
  - hnlmorg 4y ago
    This might be a regional thing but the only times I’ve ever seen a lift without an indicator has been in glass lifts.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    The residential elevators here in Japan always show the floor the elevator is currently on. They also have a monitor showing who (or what) is inside the elevator car, so you're not surprised when the door opens. (The monitor isn't always on each floor though, but always on the ground floor.) They also have a "pet" button so dog owners can warn people they have an animal in the elevator.
guhcampos 4y ago
This is why I read Hackernews. TIL Radiolab trolled me.
jaqalopes 4y ago
I think if you've never left the USA you would obviously think that there was some sort of conspiracy to install fake elevator door close buttons, since there is absolutely no feedback in the system that would help an uninformed layperson realize that the door IS closing but on a several second delay. When I lived in China, EVERY elevator door close button worked, and worked instantly. This led to exactly the behavior you would expect, of selfish people getting in elevators and immediately shutting them to hurry on towards their destination. This is not possible in America, where the ADA requires the 3-second minimum delay explained in this article so that e.g. people in wheelchairs have time to get into the lift. So it's not the case that our American elevator door close buttons are placebos, but they ARE doing a terrible job of informing users what they are doing and why.
- user3939382 4y ago
  They should have a UI where the backlight color fill slides in from left to right as you hold it.
  - taldo 4y ago
    And if you repeatedly press it, it fills up faster and changes color?
    - CRConrad 4y ago
      No, then it should stop.
- paulmooreparks 4y ago
  Exactly my experience in China, as well as in Singapore where I live. The hack I learned is that the call buttons on the outside also function as door-open buttons once the lift has arrived, so it can override the jerk inside pounding the close button.
  - djmips 4y ago
    Or if you're brave you can interrupt the door close with your hand...
anovikov 4y ago
They are totally connected, they just start door close before waiting of a usual timeout which gets annoying. At least here in EU, if i pressed the floor button i will wait a few seconds before it starts closing doors, if i press floor button then "door close" then, unless something is blocking the door, they start closing immediately.
ChickenNugger 4y ago
Kind of off topic... but after ~20 years of using *nix, the the graphic in the background finally explained to me why it's called the "shell". Mind blown.
majormajor 4y ago
It definitely varies a lot in the US. There are benefits to being curious and playing around with things vs just believing every factoid you here. The article discusses some of the various configs and rules pretty well. After reading about the distance requirements, it's unsurprising to me that smaller apartment buildings or lobbies are where I've most frequently seen "more responsive" door close buttons. It was pretty damn quick in my old apartment, probably tiny lobby + not super fast door opening so the minimum was eaten into by the time from "ding" to "fully open." I used to see people visibly surprised that it worked when I used it in that building! ("Push to cross" buttons have the same sort of fun, but with slightly more potential consequence for the people who seem to refuse to ever push them...)
kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
There are functional crosswalk buttons in NYC. They're located at busy intersections with low foot traffic where it's advantageous to extend phases for turning lanes when nobody needs to walk through.
tzs 4y ago
Note that the ADA regulations quoted in the article specifically talk about open/close timing in the context of opening and closing in response to calls. Once the minimum open time has been reached and the minimum time from until start of closing has been reached there should be no further limits on open/close timing under those regulations as written for the rest of that car's stay at that floor. I've seen elevators that do implement at that way. Once the first open finishes and the first close starts the "open" and "close" buttons both act immediately. This comes in useful when the elevator arrives, people get off and on, and then as the doors close someone running down the hall shouts asking to hold the elevator. Someone inside can press "open" to reverse the closing, and then as soon as the person gets in a press of "close" resumes closing (even if the door had not yet finished opening).
naet 4y ago
Most of the online pieces about door close buttons I can find appear to be based solely on the 2016 NYTimes article and actually repeat the claim about the placebo affect more strongly than the NYTimes originally makes it. In other words, the "fact" that the door close button is a placebo seems to mostly just be a product of lazy journalists rewriting an NYTimes piece enough to not feel like plagiarists. I hate that this has become the norm for journalism where only one person does any actual research, and then tons of other outlets paraphrase it and publish their own version. It devalues the work (why would you go through the trouble of actual research when you can just rip off someone else?), makes it difficult to tell where the story actually came from, and it pollutes the search space with dozens of copies of the same story each with slightly less connection to the original source material. It's a lot like the XKCD wikipedia citation loop: https://xkcd.com/978/ https://xkcd.com/978/
mhb 4y ago
And then, there's the paternoster (no buttons and no stops): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35158625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35158625
ShadowBanThis01 4y ago
This exemplifies the utility of greying things out in a UI. Elevator buttons should be illuminated, but only when available. That would be a cool way to see exactly when and if the thing becomes useful, and save the user some annoyance.
amalcon 4y ago
It's pretty common for hospitals to have long maximum close times but short minimums: the former as an accommodation, and the later because occasionally patients need to be transported as quickly as possible. The door close button very obviously does something on those elevators.
kondro 4y ago
I know the article isn’t really about door close buttons but after just coming back from Japan I can confirm that every door close button did exactly what you’d expect it to.
- nagonago 4y ago
  Living in Japan, I can confirm that elevator door close buttons tend to work much more immediately than in the US. Also, the doors themselves are more aggressive, so it's inadvisable to try to stop the door with your hand. These two things combined lead to an elevator culture where somebody will usually hold the door open button until everybody gets in, then press the door close button. Efficient.
userbinator 4y ago
This seems like an unintentional side-effect of bad wording in the ADA. The intent is obviously to give people enough time to enter an elevator before its door closes automatically, but I don't think they had in mind restricting the manual close functionality when they wrote that sentence. If they had added to it to read "...start to close without intervention shall be..." , we wouldn't need to have this whole discussion. Relatedly, in the past I've been on a (very old) elevator, which just waited with the doors open at the last floor it was called to, and didn't even have a close nor open button for the doors. Selecting a floor, and possibly calls from other floors, would close them automatically, and they would open when the elevator arrived at its destination.
- ghayes 4y ago
  I mostly agree with the first addendum, though one could imagine an impatient patron at a hotel mashing the "door close" button to the chagrin of say an elderly person walking towards the elevator.
kuon 4y ago
When I was in Japan, I realized that there (compared to Europe) elevators where much more "aggressive", they bip if you hold the open button and after about a minute, the door start closing slowly even if you hold the open button pressed. And there, the close button definitely work and will close the door immediately. Of course I make some generalities as it depends but it is my general memory of Japanese elevators. Also you can "deactivate" Floor button by double tap or hold if you pressed the wrong one.

329 points by ecliptik 4y ago

eps 4y ago

The depth of this article is really impressive.

The "door close" button might be an override to the "long open" button in some elevators. Then, it might appear as unconnected for the regular use case.

mankyd 4y ago
That's basically what the article says: elevator doors (in the US) have a minimum open time, as specified by the ADA, and try to close as soon as this minimum time is reached. The close button can't override the minimum, so generally it seems like the button does nothing. Meanwhile, some elevators (hospitals are the example given) do hold the door open longer than the minimum, and the close button works in those places, per their testing.

reaperducer 4y ago

Bottom line: "Door close" is not universally useful to all people. On some elevators, it's programmed to actually close the doors for a regular passenger. On some elevators, it's programmed to only respond to firefighters, janitors, or other people who have the ability to put the elevator into a local control mode. It varies from building to building. Everything else is a placebo.

mikestew 4y ago
The "bottom line" is that such poorly-researched, context-free articles are written to get you to click (see the NYT example), and then something contextual to NYC (crosswalk buttons) get generalized to the whole nation. And then, true or not, people think elevator close buttons don't do anything.
mankyd 4y ago
That's not at all what this well-researched article finds.
martopix 4y ago
The article clearly states that the "placebo" theory is baseless, so I'm not sure what your "bottom line" that closes with "everything else is a placebo" comes from. What is "everything else" exactly?

jgrahamc 4y ago

It's very common in Europe for there to be no Door Close button.

8organicbits 4y ago
I was very confused by the article and started to doubt myself before I realized the author forgot about the world outside the US. It's pretty easy to find photos of these elevators. https://duckduckgo.com/?va=t&t=ha&q=elevator+with+no+close+button+&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?va=t&t=ha&q=elevator+with+no+close+b...
- jcrawfordor 4y ago
  I did some research into European elevator codes and got the impression that depending on country there was either DO/DC or a single Door Hold button - but it seems like the labeling on DH might be identical to DO on some elevators which creates sort of a philosophical question as to if they're really different things. Still, you can find elevators with DO, DH, and DC it seems, and in that case I have no idea what the difference is between DO and DH. It's kind of hard to cover this stuff in Europe as the degree of variation from country to country is pretty high, so pretty much any rule you state won't apply in some major city that people will bring up. Perhaps I should have been more explicit, but in general I hope the discussion of ADA and the ASME code makes it clear that I'm talking about the US. Actually the ASME code mostly applies directly to Canada as well as a separate but harmonized code.
vultour 4y ago
It's also very common in Europe that the door close button actually works as one expects.

jaywalk 4y ago

I had always wondered where the "placebo" myth came from, because I've been in so many elevators where the door close button obviously works. Great article!

sbradford26 4y ago

Just need an * on the button. Close doors when all other parameters are satisfied. * * The minimum door opening time parameter might be the standard door closing time parameter

ortusdux 4y ago

The elevator in a building I lived in had a feature, presumably for emergency responders, where holding the door close and a floor number simultaneously for a few seconds would take you directly to that floor. I believe that method has been replaced with a standardized keyed override. The trick did come in handy once when a bratty kid pushed all the buttons as a prank.

polpo 4y ago
I'm not sure where I learned it, but I've found that in many older elevators in the US, pressing door close simultaneously with the floor number will also get the doors to close immediately.

MDWolinski 4y ago

Personally, don’t really care or use the door close button. However, would so much love it if I press a floor by accident, the second press deselects it.

felideon 4y ago
Have never tried it, but apparently double click to undo works. [source: https://twitter.com/buritica/status/1598518847018979329?s=20 https://twitter.com/buritica/status/1598518847018979329?s=20]
- jrockway 4y ago
  Those buttons look like they're in some place other than the US (I think we have two types of buttons here, but I'm not enough of an elevator nerd to explain why). In Japan I've seen the double-click to undo pretty much everywhere. The door close buttons also work. I could be wrong but I think the ADA was a little overzealous. 99% of the time there isn't someone with low mobility trying to walk over to the elevator. The 1% of the time someone is having trouble, I've never seen them pound the door close button; they hold their hand to block the light curtain until they get in. (When the elevator starts beeping and doing the slow-close thing, that's when I take my hand out. I've never seen anyone's hand get crushed in the elevator, but you can tell it wants blood.)
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    In any modern elevator, the door closing force is only enough to move the doors. Any normally-strong person could hold the door open indefinitely.
    - jrockway 4y ago
      Haha, I'm sure that's true, I'm just unnaturally scared.
djmips 4y ago
I've heard this is works in Japan. Can anyone confirm?

eCa 4y ago

In my building (northern Europe) the doors are open for quite a while (maybe ten seconds). The door-close button closes immediately on push, as long as nothing/no-one is entering/leaving the elevator. If it didn’t, I’d use the elevator even less than I do. Stairs to/from the third floor is just about the same time as the elevator.

Reason077 4y ago
Right. Throughout Europe and the UK, the "door close" button usually does exactly that. Unless something is blocking the door, it will close the door immediately. It's in the US and Canada that the placebo, non-working "door close" button seems to be the norm, due to regulations in those countries. So why have a "door close" button at all in the US? I guess because most elevator designs/manufacturers have their origins in Europe. ThyssenKrupp (Germany), Kone (Finland), Schindler (Germany), etc. And rather than design a different panel for the European and North American markets, they just have one common design but with the software configured differently.
- klausa 4y ago
  > So why have a "door close" button at all in the US? If only the article you're commenting on described in detail a secondary, safety-critical function of that button, maybe we wouldn't have to resort to this kind of speculation. Oh well. Maybe next time!
- windows2020 4y ago
  The article explains that door close may function in some scenarios and special modes, like independent service mode. Maintenance put one elevator into this mode to help us with moving in. The elevator stayed open at the floor until door close was pressed and held long enough for the doors to close at which time it became eligible to move to the specified floor.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > So why have a “door close” button at all in the US? As explicitly stated in the article: (1) Its a legal and functional requirement for fire service mode, when automatic door closing is completely disabled. (2) Some users (the article specifically tested hospitals, based on experience of very long normal door hold times there that would suggest their should be a window between the minimum and normal hold time) do, in fact, configure minimum and normal hold time with a window which allows the button to operate. It’s not a “non-functional button”. Its a button which is functional, but where the variable it controls is often configured by users to have no range of variability.

dcow 4y ago

My anecdotal experience matches the conclusion… that internet-urban myths are born of poor regurgitation of glorified content marketing; and also that most door close buttons work after a minimum time threshold. Interesting to learn it’s part of the ADA. Neat newsletter, I subscribed.

runxel 4y ago

This site would so much improve by using `background-attachment: fixed;` in its CSS. I'm getting a headache here.

humanistbot 4y ago
I mean, the site is named "Computers are Bad," which fits.
philbarr 4y ago
you're right. Open dev tools and add it yourself. :)
- runxel 4y ago
  Oh, no worries. I did! :) Stylus makes the internet so much better.
ryandrake 4y ago
Not only that, but the text is a tiny sliver of horizontal space, with that annoying background filler everywhere else. It's so bad I had to break out the ruler just to be sure: My monitor is 24 inches across, and at my default text size, the content of that site is 6 inches across: 3/4 of the screen wasted. This web developer needs a paddlin'.

mc32 4y ago

The lesson here is that often these "serious" programs are still entertainment and are not rigorous and you should always retain some skepticism and not believe what they say verbatim. This includes things like Myth Busters and so on. I'm not saying they are lying on purpose, but they have schedules and expectations to fulfill, so they may stray from time to time.

LeonM 4y ago

There is another reason for the close door button: so that the manufacturer or service mechanic have something to blame. In my building the elevators were brand new (less than a few months old) and were constantly out of order. The service mechanic was called in time after time, he would arrive, run diagnostics, find that nothing was wrong, then reset the control system and leave. After the 10th time or so, the building manager demanded to have the entire system replaced under warranty. The manufacturer told us: there is nothing wrong with the lift, but you guys are constantly pressing the close door button, this breaks the lift! So obviously our abuse of the lift was not going to be covered under warranty. We called their bluff we had the mechanic disable the close button. The lift still broke. A week later the entire control system was replaced (under warranty) and the lift has functioned normally ever since, though they never enabled the close door button again... :-(

klyrs 4y ago
The idea that pressing the door-close button would constitute "abuse" is laughable. If it's actually a self-destruct button by design, it should be locked out by default.
remram 4y ago
> constantly pressing the close door button, this breaks the lift I'm not sure I understand the argument? Why does this break the elevator? Why would a built-in button crashing the elevator not be considered a fault?
- LeonM 4y ago
  > Why does this break the elevator? It doesn't > Why would a built-in button crashing the elevator not be considered a fault? The manufacturer was trying to get out of a warranty claim, hoping the customer was naive enough to believe their story.
  - aliasxneo 4y ago
    > The manufacturer was trying to get out of a warranty claim, hoping the customer was naive enough to believe their story To be fair, I worked in the service industry for many years (as a controls technician), and I had many co-workers who intentionally set up long cons like this to stay busy. They would come up with equally outlandish reasons for why they needed to keep going back and upper management was mostly clueless as to how ridiculous they were.

renlo 4y ago

> In other words, there may be some period during which pushing the door close button causes the door to close, but it will be after the end of the ADA-required minimum door time. The button mashers were right all along! I'd always thought it was futile to keep pressing the close-door button, but it sounds like if you "mash" it you're more likely to hit that sweet spot where the button is active.

germinalphrase 4y ago
Sounds like they should light up the close door button after the ADA required time to indicate when the button is active (rather than the status quo in which the functionality is illegible).

goatkey 4y ago

For anyone reading this and intrigued by elevator inspections, I highly recommend The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead. It's a fun, fiction read!

gonehome 4y ago

I was recently in El Salvador and the hotel (Hyatt Centric San Salvador) had ThyssenKrupp elevators with door close buttons that actually worked! Presumably no ADA minimum times enforced there. And it was amazing! Well, as amazing as such a thing can be - to push a button and have immediate feedback/response (it also felt like the doors even closed faster than they do here). Pushing a button and having it do nothing is one of those frustrating little indignities, it’s bad with software and it’s even worse in the real world.

bentcorner 4y ago
Some kind of feedback could probably help a lot. On a device with a screen you'd disable the button and maybe add some kind of countdown to show when you can press it. There's a bunch of ways to show this with physical buttons but I guess they'd all be varying amounts of non-cheap.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  This is one of those weird times where less feedback may be better because of human psychology. Letting people hammer on the button without feedback gives them something to kill time with and the wait is more palatable.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- jonny_eh 4y ago
  Or at least have the button light up, and stay lit, until the door is closed.
- megablast 4y ago
  No. Having it close the doors when you press close the doors is what is wanted. Not a little light.
SoftTalker 4y ago
In the 1990s I worked in a building in Chicago that had instant-response close buttons. It was nice.

alexpotato 4y ago

If you liked the original post, you will probably LOVE this DEFCON talk about elevator hacking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHf1vD5_b5I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHf1vD5_b5I It also gives a lot of fascinating information about elevators in general and specific operation modes. e.g. there is a "riot mode" where the elevator goes to every floor except the first (or ground in EU) floor aka to the lobby. The idea was that, during a riot, a luxury building in NYC would lock the stairwell access from the lobby but people could still take the elevator to the other floors to visit their neighbors etc

schwartzworld 4y ago
Sort of similar: elevators in Israel may be programmed to stop at every floor during the Sabbath, as riding the elevator is permitted according to the talmudic definition of "work", but summoning the elevator is not.
- refactor_master 4y ago
  Except if it’s summoned by a kosher switch? ;) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KosherSwitch https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KosherSwitch
  - calgarymicro 4y ago
    >The basic idea is that the switch activates only sometimes, and only after a delay, making the action indirect and uncertain. Several Orthodox poskim have ruled as thus makes the device permissible for general consumer use.[5][6] Others, however, have reached the opposite conclusion.[2] Wow. Well, loopholes are loopholes I guess.
  - omginternets 4y ago
    Surely, pushing a button frantically constitutes “work”.
- delecti 4y ago
  I've always found it fascinating and delightful how Jewish people in particular seem to treat loopholes like that in their religion as features rather than bugs. Christians (the only other religion I've got much exposure to) seem to either ignore their rules entirely, or interpret them more according to a vague vibe of intent.

Dylan16807 4y ago

A crosswalk button that does nothing is a placebo even if that wasn't the original intent. The elevator button is more complicated but I think the typical uselessness combined with misleading label is enough to qualify. The reason it exists isn't placebo, but the way it's set up makes it a placebo, even if it's via negligence.

D13Fd 4y ago
The term "placebo" implies intent. So saying something is "a placebo even if that wasn't the original intent" is like saying something "is red even if it isn't that color."
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  It wasn't originally a color, but it rusted. People are being tricked by the presentation, and it's being left that way out of lack of caring. Negligence is a form of intent. Especially it's intent when new elevators are getting the same treatment.

DeathArrow 4y ago

Like many things in life, some door close buttons work, some not.

cynicalsecurity 4y ago

I wish the door close button worked as expected. It gives me distributing horror film vibes when it doesn't work and others come in.

deleted 4y ago

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bandyaboot 4y ago

I think the Door Close button should be able to override the minimum ADA wait time. What are we worried about? People intentionally closing the door while disabled people are trying to make their way to the elevator door? I expect that's a nearly non-existent problem.

causi 4y ago
People intentionally closing the door while disabled people are trying to make their way to the elevator door? I expect that's a nearly non-existent problem. People are assholes. Also, a lot of people would just get into the habit of hitting the door close button the moment they step on without even looking for anyone else.
deleted 4y ago
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kayodelycaon 4y ago
I've seen people hit the door close button immediately as an elevator arrived at a floor or immediately as they enter it, no matter who is waiting behind them. It doesn't work, but they try it anyway. If you allow the button to do that, quite a few people would abuse it. In my opinion, there are enough bad actors to justify preventing them from abusing the system.
- account42 4y ago
  Perhaps that is due to them mistakenly thinking that there is a delay between pressing the button and the door closing (rather then a minimum time the door is open) so they might as well press it early.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  The solution is simple: have cameras in all the elevators in the city, all connected to an AI control system, which observes all the people using the elevators and their use of the buttons. The AI system determines which people are assholes abusing the door-close button, and ignores the button when they press it. As a bonus, it frequently ignores them if they're the only person requesting an elevator, and sometimes locks them in the elevator for a few minutes when they're riding alone, and then alters the video footage to hide this occurrence, so they look insane when they complain about it.

vultour 4y ago

What a pointlessly elaborate way of arriving at the conclusion that the button actually doesn't work. Sorry, but from the POV of the user one does not care whether it's the "elevator controller" blocking the input or the button is not connected at all. The end result is the same - you walk into the elevator, press the button, and nothing happens. Hitting an annoyed user with an anecdotal "actually if the door hold timer was longer the button would work just fine!!!" doesn't help in the slightest.

bandyaboot 4y ago
I take it as a push back against the mildly conspiratorial thinking that elevator companies left in an explicitly non-functioning button for the sake of giving people a sense of control.
mynameisvlad 4y ago
Did you… actually read the article? If you got “the button actually doesn’t work” out of the same article that I did, then one of us needs to take reading comprehension lessons.
moron4hire 4y ago
That's a bit like saying your computer's shutdown sequence "doesn't work" because it prioritizes ending processes gracefully before actually powering off the computer.
- vultour 4y ago
  No, it's like having a computer that's already in the shutdown sequence and somebody puts a magical button in front of you and says if you press this it's going to turn the computer off. Then when you press it nothing changes because the computer is already shutting down waiting for the processes to stop.

DrewADesign 4y ago

Yeah I never really got why people made that claim. In my experience, the door close button works fine after some minimum amount of time. Elevators I've used that are primarily for folks with significant mobility issues or maybe where they're carrying a lot of stuff, like for a Hotel catering kitchen, seem to stay open a bit longer. In one hotel I used to get Zipcars from a lot, the elevator to the parking garage would stay open for like 30 seconds if you didn't hit the door close button. It was like that for well over a decade so I doubt it was just misconfigured. Elevators in professional or residential buildings that need to optimize for the number of trips just have a different use case, so the door closes much more quickly.

dhritzkiv 4y ago

Anecdotally, the near dozen or so elevators I've regularly used in Canada (both in residential and commercial settings) have had their Door Close button work as you'd expect: near instantly – no three-or-more second minimum imposed for the doors to be open.

dpc050505 4y ago
As a highrise window cleaner that worked in Victoria, Vancouver and Montreal I can tell you you got lucky.

adrianmonk 4y ago

Also, consider what would happen if door close buttons really did what people think they want: to close the door immediately, unilaterally, and without limitation. If elevators allowed that, then as soon as the doors started to open, a selfish elevator rider would think "sorry, you losers out there in the elevator lobby, I gotta get to floor 7 ASAP, so you can take the next one" and push the button. So common sense says the button is only going to let you fine tune how long the door stays open, not have complete control. So you shouldn't conclude from the fact that it doesn't give you complete control that it must not do anything.

JoeAltmaier 4y ago
That's a leap. The door will close in seconds anyway. The button is locked out until the minimum time has elapsed. The window between those two times is the only place the button could work. Is it 1 second? 2 seconds? So the door close button, by regulation, can do little or nothing
- pflenker 4y ago
  The article mentions cases where this is not true - e.g. hospitals, where elevators are configured to stay open much longer than the minimum.
halestock 4y ago
I used to work in a building where the elevators operated this way, and riders sometimes DID push the close door button immediately, assuming there was no one waiting to go up and closing the door on people waiting.
eknkc 4y ago
The buttons work here in our office building and many other places. Some wait for the door to be fully open first and then allow immediate closing. That would solve your issue. Some do actually stop opening and close the doors halfway through. Never once seen someone do that. I mean if you are gonna be a dick, you can shove people out of the elevator anyway. No need for a button.

shadowgovt 4y ago

I love Radiolab as entertainment podcasting, but it's worth knowing that they're surface-skimming their topics and frequently make meaningful errors on the details. I recall vaguely a story they did about how it was hard to walk straight while blindfolded and how weird that was, and I immediately flashed back to a college professor demonstrating this in a controls theory class... But as a proof of how inaccuracy mounts in an open-loop control system, because that's actually entirely expected (the odds random error would sum consistently to zero is what would be weird and unexpected).

hairofadog 4y ago

True story: when I was in college I was at a crosswalk waiting for a walk signal, and two people walked up. One of them started pressing the walk button furiously, and she said, "It won't change unless you press it a bunch of times really fast." When the walk signal lit up about ten seconds later she said, "See?"

crazygringo 4y ago
Are you sure they weren't pranking you? I definitely would try to convince people of random incorrect technological things when I was younger (like high school). That sounds exactly like something I would have done...

ElectricSpoon 4y ago

A less known feature of some crosswalk buttons is that some have accessibility features. I've seen a few that were pointless when pressed due to automatic triggering. Long-press and you'll get longer time and an audible indicator while crossing.

merlyn 4y ago
In downtown Minneapolis, the whole of downtown is on computer controlled traffic light grid, so the crosswalk buttons don't change any of the timing of the traffic light grid. But on all the ADA upgraded intersections, the crosswalk buttons DO start announcing the count down time, and what intersection they are at. So, they do something, but they won't change the time it takes the light to actually change.

nemo44x 4y ago

I think I've noticed in Japan, people hit the door close button on the way out of the elevator if no one is standing outside to enter. Can anyone verify if this is etiquette in Japan? Are there other places that have certain etiquette that outsiders may not be aware of?

CM30 4y ago

Based on my experience, the door close button seems to work as expected at my office. Press the button, and the doors close much more quickly than they usually do. As for crossing buttons... generally they do work in the UK. It's just that if the crossing is in the middle of a normal road (read, where there's no reason for the lights to change automatically) it's required, whereas if the crossing is at a junction, it'll merely display the signal to cross whenever the lights would be set to change anyway.

sushisource 4y ago
The reference to crossing buttons not working I found particularly annoying because my experience here in Seattle is, except at the busiest intersections, you do in fact need to press the buttons, otherwise the crosswalk won't show the walking man for you, even if traffic is in fact stopped in the relevant direction. (Of course, the article points out this was meant to be only about NYC) Particularly obnoxiously, if you are even a millisecond late in pressing the button (traffic just got the red light), you won't get the walking man until the next cycle. Infuriating.
- none_to_remain 4y ago
  It's funnier because you're not allowed to jaywalk in Seattle

pflenker 4y ago

We’re all obsessing here about the door close button while a surprisingly large number habe trouble understanding the up/down buttons. Surprisingly often, especially elderly people seem to think „if the elevator is currently above me, I have to push „down“ because I want it to go down to pick me up“.

ammar2 4y ago
How do you they know if the elevator is currently above them? Most elevators from my experience don't show the current floor they're on.
- rascul 4y ago
  In my experiences, there's often an indicator above the elevator. Not always though, and I don't use elevators much.
- dosethree 4y ago
  A lot of buildings down have floors under floor #1 so its always above you
- kevincox 4y ago
  I've seen it fairly frequently in residential buildings in Toronto. Usually the main floor has a current floor indicator but often the other floors don't. Minor cost savings probably?
- hnlmorg 4y ago
  This might be a regional thing but the only times I’ve ever seen a lift without an indicator has been in glass lifts.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  The residential elevators here in Japan always show the floor the elevator is currently on. They also have a monitor showing who (or what) is inside the elevator car, so you're not surprised when the door opens. (The monitor isn't always on each floor though, but always on the ground floor.) They also have a "pet" button so dog owners can warn people they have an animal in the elevator.

guhcampos 4y ago

This is why I read Hackernews. TIL Radiolab trolled me.

jaqalopes 4y ago

I think if you've never left the USA you would obviously think that there was some sort of conspiracy to install fake elevator door close buttons, since there is absolutely no feedback in the system that would help an uninformed layperson realize that the door IS closing but on a several second delay. When I lived in China, EVERY elevator door close button worked, and worked instantly. This led to exactly the behavior you would expect, of selfish people getting in elevators and immediately shutting them to hurry on towards their destination. This is not possible in America, where the ADA requires the 3-second minimum delay explained in this article so that e.g. people in wheelchairs have time to get into the lift. So it's not the case that our American elevator door close buttons are placebos, but they ARE doing a terrible job of informing users what they are doing and why.

user3939382 4y ago
They should have a UI where the backlight color fill slides in from left to right as you hold it.
- taldo 4y ago
  And if you repeatedly press it, it fills up faster and changes color?
  - CRConrad 4y ago
    No, then it should stop.
paulmooreparks 4y ago
Exactly my experience in China, as well as in Singapore where I live. The hack I learned is that the call buttons on the outside also function as door-open buttons once the lift has arrived, so it can override the jerk inside pounding the close button.
- djmips 4y ago
  Or if you're brave you can interrupt the door close with your hand...

anovikov 4y ago

They are totally connected, they just start door close before waiting of a usual timeout which gets annoying. At least here in EU, if i pressed the floor button i will wait a few seconds before it starts closing doors, if i press floor button then "door close" then, unless something is blocking the door, they start closing immediately.

ChickenNugger 4y ago

Kind of off topic... but after ~20 years of using *nix, the the graphic in the background finally explained to me why it's called the "shell". Mind blown.

majormajor 4y ago

It definitely varies a lot in the US. There are benefits to being curious and playing around with things vs just believing every factoid you here. The article discusses some of the various configs and rules pretty well. After reading about the distance requirements, it's unsurprising to me that smaller apartment buildings or lobbies are where I've most frequently seen "more responsive" door close buttons. It was pretty damn quick in my old apartment, probably tiny lobby + not super fast door opening so the minimum was eaten into by the time from "ding" to "fully open." I used to see people visibly surprised that it worked when I used it in that building! ("Push to cross" buttons have the same sort of fun, but with slightly more potential consequence for the people who seem to refuse to ever push them...)

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago

There are functional crosswalk buttons in NYC. They're located at busy intersections with low foot traffic where it's advantageous to extend phases for turning lanes when nobody needs to walk through.

tzs 4y ago

Note that the ADA regulations quoted in the article specifically talk about open/close timing in the context of opening and closing in response to calls. Once the minimum open time has been reached and the minimum time from until start of closing has been reached there should be no further limits on open/close timing under those regulations as written for the rest of that car's stay at that floor. I've seen elevators that do implement at that way. Once the first open finishes and the first close starts the "open" and "close" buttons both act immediately. This comes in useful when the elevator arrives, people get off and on, and then as the doors close someone running down the hall shouts asking to hold the elevator. Someone inside can press "open" to reverse the closing, and then as soon as the person gets in a press of "close" resumes closing (even if the door had not yet finished opening).

naet 4y ago

Most of the online pieces about door close buttons I can find appear to be based solely on the 2016 NYTimes article and actually repeat the claim about the placebo affect more strongly than the NYTimes originally makes it. In other words, the "fact" that the door close button is a placebo seems to mostly just be a product of lazy journalists rewriting an NYTimes piece enough to not feel like plagiarists. I hate that this has become the norm for journalism where only one person does any actual research, and then tons of other outlets paraphrase it and publish their own version. It devalues the work (why would you go through the trouble of actual research when you can just rip off someone else?), makes it difficult to tell where the story actually came from, and it pollutes the search space with dozens of copies of the same story each with slightly less connection to the original source material. It's a lot like the XKCD wikipedia citation loop: https://xkcd.com/978/ https://xkcd.com/978/

mhb 4y ago

And then, there's the paternoster (no buttons and no stops): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35158625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35158625

ShadowBanThis01 4y ago

This exemplifies the utility of greying things out in a UI. Elevator buttons should be illuminated, but only when available. That would be a cool way to see exactly when and if the thing becomes useful, and save the user some annoyance.

amalcon 4y ago

It's pretty common for hospitals to have long maximum close times but short minimums: the former as an accommodation, and the later because occasionally patients need to be transported as quickly as possible. The door close button very obviously does something on those elevators.

kondro 4y ago

I know the article isn’t really about door close buttons but after just coming back from Japan I can confirm that every door close button did exactly what you’d expect it to.

nagonago 4y ago
Living in Japan, I can confirm that elevator door close buttons tend to work much more immediately than in the US. Also, the doors themselves are more aggressive, so it's inadvisable to try to stop the door with your hand. These two things combined lead to an elevator culture where somebody will usually hold the door open button until everybody gets in, then press the door close button. Efficient.

userbinator 4y ago

This seems like an unintentional side-effect of bad wording in the ADA. The intent is obviously to give people enough time to enter an elevator before its door closes automatically, but I don't think they had in mind restricting the manual close functionality when they wrote that sentence. If they had added to it to read "...start to close without intervention shall be..." , we wouldn't need to have this whole discussion. Relatedly, in the past I've been on a (very old) elevator, which just waited with the doors open at the last floor it was called to, and didn't even have a close nor open button for the doors. Selecting a floor, and possibly calls from other floors, would close them automatically, and they would open when the elevator arrived at its destination.

ghayes 4y ago
I mostly agree with the first addendum, though one could imagine an impatient patron at a hotel mashing the "door close" button to the chagrin of say an elderly person walking towards the elevator.

kuon 4y ago

When I was in Japan, I realized that there (compared to Europe) elevators where much more "aggressive", they bip if you hold the open button and after about a minute, the door start closing slowly even if you hold the open button pressed. And there, the close button definitely work and will close the door immediately. Of course I make some generalities as it depends but it is my general memory of Japanese elevators. Also you can "deactivate" Floor button by double tap or hold if you pressed the wrong one.