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Carnage On The Escalators

Are PaterNoster lifts so called because you say your prayers (our father) when you're using them?
 
Re: Balls

Dark Detective said:
This reminds me of a FOAF tale I heard as a kid. Someone was climbing on a goal post, slipped and fell, and unfortunately, to use a footballing phrase, slit his ball bag.

A kid at my primary school was attempting to climb a wrought iron fence, one with spikes.
He slipped and the bit of him between his bum and his balls got pierced by the spike.

For months afterwards people were still trying to convince him that it meant he was a girl now.

pinkle
 
Going back to escalators. where I now work I am in a quite large store. Close to my desk is an escalator that goes up. I have endless fun watching people trying to go down it. Quite often people will step on the top before they realise that it is going the wrong way. What makes me laugh the most is the people that come up look around for a minute or so and then try to get down the escalator they've just come up
I guess I could tell them but wheres the fun in that.
 
I remember a news story within the last couple of months about a woman dying in an escalator. One of the "steps" collapsed and she fell partly through as it got to the end - not a pretty thought.
Can't think where I saw it, just one of the daily papers, so might be rubbish, but seemed probable.

edit:
http://www.mumbai-central.com/nukkad/dec1999/msg00073.html

http://www.safetynews.co.uk/archive safety news 10.11.02.htm#Fatal accident on escalator

http://www.consumeralert.org/pubs/monitor/2000/Sep00.htm

last link claims 1200 serious injuries a year in the US alone.
 
Back to Lifts

Its not quite a public safety advert, but does anyone remember one of the characters in LA Law falling down a lift shaft? She was having an argument with someone, and the lift doors opened and she just walked in without looking and.... well, you know :cross eye

So I have to check that the lift is actually there everytime I use it.
 
Re: Back to Lifts

raven said:
She was having an argument with someone, and the lift doors opened and she just walked in without looking and.... well, you know :cross eye

Splatter!

I remember that. I hate lifts. Part of my job in certain buildings is to bring all the lifts to the top floor (without using the stairs if youlike those logic puzzle things). I hate that.
 
No idea what a paternoster is. Must be a 70's thing. Sounds dodgy as funk, cant imagine how/why they'd ever have been allowed.

I always remember my Mum stressing at me about getting caught up in the lifts in Wycombe tesco. I remember a video with a little girl who's red wellington boot gets all chewed up in the lift?

The goalkeeper who caught his ring on a rusty nail (oo-eer!) on the crossbar was Argentina's 1986 WC winning stopper Nery Pumpido.
 
Also on a kind of unrelated point was British Bulldog or Nuts, Bolts, Singles as it was called at our school banned at everybody else's school because someone had supposedly been knocked over and trampled to death?
 
Paternoster elevators are sometimes called "Coffin" elevators :eek!!!!:
 
intaglio said:
Paternoster elevators are sometimes called "Coffin" elevators :eek!!!!:

Sounds reasonable.....

I don't think that you would get many users, with a name like that tho'!!!!!

Does anyone know why they were called "paternosters", was it a trade name or did you say a prayer & take your life in your hands....:splat:
 
David said:
Sounds reasonable.....

I don't think that you would get many users, with a name like that tho'!!!!!

Does anyone know why they were called "paternosters", was it a trade name or did you say a prayer & take your life in your hands....:splat:

any of a number of special beads occurring at regular intervals in a rosary, indicating that the Lord's Prayer is to be recited.
 
what about when the escalator isn't working?

I always feel a bit disorientated when stepping on and walking down them when they're stopped, does anyone else get this and does anyone know of people experiencing this and falling down them?
just curious
 
Yeah, I do - poss cos they're a steeper and each step is higher, so you get a very mild "freefall" feeling. Is quite weird isn't it? :)
 
I always thought it was due to the expectation that it is an escalator and it would be moving when you step onto it. I can walk down a moving one if I'm in a rush with no trouble but when they're stationary it seems to be difficult to do so
 
Yeah, that's true - also the thought that it may suddenly spring into life when you're halfway up or down it :).
 
or stop when you're half way down:eek!!!!:

I like the moving floorways they have on manchester piccadilly station:cool:
 
stu neville said:
Yeah, I do - poss cos they're a steeper and each step is higher, so you get a very mild "freefall" feeling. Is quite weird isn't it? :)

I always thought it was cuz the steps were steeper too. But I guess it depends on how long your legs are.
 
I used to go over the top in the Sheffield Uni paternoster when I was a student there- to be honest it was a non event- just dark, and clunking noises.

Escalators are scary, though- have you ever tried to take more than one small child, or more than one disabled person, on the London Underground escalators?
They are sometimes quite fast, and the only way to get to your destination.
When they were first introduced, nearly a hundred years ago, Underground escalators went even faster, and people were regularly injured.
Ouch.

(edit first escalator in London Underground was in 1911 at Earl's Court.)
 
Why are escalators going down still called escalators? Shouldn't they be called descenders?
 
Xanatic said:
I remember in our woodwork class. Besides this big drill there was an articler hanged up with a picture. It was of a girl who had got her long hair caught in a machine. And half of it had been ripped out. Bit it was in the metal department, I don't think any children came in and saw the pic.

Likewise! At my secondary school there was a picture of the hairy mess that was left on/in a lathe by a 'scalped' lad from the seventies. Perhaps there was some kind of central horror-photo distribution for state schools.

As for people that sue and demand compensation for actions that are results of their own stupidity: they should be publically ridiculed and forcibly forbidden to pollute the gene-pool... :rolleyes:
 
Re: Finger Loss
My aunt had to take one of her husband's friends to casualty after he lost a finger taking down the goal nets. he jumped up to unhook the net , caught his wedding ring on the hook and his finger was ripped off. This was in the mid to late 1980s if memory serves. Very nasty.
 
Never travel on an escalator in busy airports

Sally said:
About escalator accidents, they do seem to happen quite often. On dec. 13, 1999, an eight-year-old girl was crushed to death in an escalator accident at the Indira Gandhi International Airport.

I'm not surprised at this. I travelled to India once with my sister and on arriving at Madras airport used the escalator to get to the customs area. It wasn't until we were halfway down that it began to dawn on us that when people got to the bottom they just stopped and stood right at the foot of the escalator. It seemed that it was up to people to try and push their way off then take their turn blocking the bottom of the thing! :wince: Also the place was packed as well, so when we got to the bottom we heaved people out of the way as best we could and got the hell out of the way.

I don't mind telling you as we were getting close to the bottom and actually pushing our way through the crowd I was REALLY scared (I've nearly drowned twice when I was a kid and the level of fear I felt then was comparable).:eek!!!!:

Once we'd calmed down after this I noticed that this all seemed quite normal to the locals and no-one seemed to blink an eyelid at the idea of forcing your way off the escalator. We were bloody furious! :mad:
 
My mum told me that once, whilst shopping in Brent Cross shopping centre in London, way back when, a girl's sandal got sucked under the 'lip' at the bottom of the escalator and her foot was dragged in after it. Mum always said that the sound of the girl's screaming was just awful. The details are a little hazy, i'm afraid, but i'm pretty sure that the escalator was stopped and the girl's foot amputated at the scene.

After that, escalators didn't have a 'lip' anymore. They have 'teeth', if you know what i mean, that prevent this sort of thing happening so easily.
 
The Yithian said:
As for people that sue and demand compensation for actions that are results of their own stupidity: they should be publically ridiculed and forcibly forbidden to pollute the gene-pool... :rolleyes:

Sorry, Yith, but we now live in a world where common sense and safety are ignored in favour of blame transferrence. We aren't allowed to show Public Information films because "they might unnecessarily frighten the children" ... WHAAT? Frighten the little sods to make sure they don't endanger or harm themselves or other people! They will not be permanently harmed from seeing a cat acting more intelligently than the kid but they will be harmed by stupidity and perverts!

When a child is harmed, either by accident or intent, the parent feels terrible and rightly so. But if the accident was caused by the stupidity or ignorance of the parents, they don't want to feel responsible ... so they'll blame anyone but themselves. Wherever the blame lies, it should be faced and acted upon.

Escalators are as safe as they can make them (given current technology and understanding). It isn't the Underground or the manufacturers fault if the user involved in an incident was responsible due to lack of care, ignorance etc.

A pencil is dangerous and can cause permanent blindness ... if the pencils user is stupid enough to shove it in their own eye!
:p
 
McAvennie said:
Also on a kind of unrelated point was British Bulldog or Nuts, Bolts, Singles as it was called at our school banned at everybody else's school because someone had supposedly been knocked over and trampled to death?

Is that the game where you sit on someone's shoulders, and whole lines of double-stacked children charge each other? I played that at six, and fell off, smashing my back against a low wall (about 20cm or so high). Got a nice extended holiday and impressive set of wounds for it :(
 
Yup!

Both British Bulldog, and an even more impressive game by the name of 'Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry' were banned by my school. Odd really when the most horrible injuries were caused by falling over during tag or slipping on ice.


Actually, now that I think about it, snowball throwing was banned as stones could be inside the snow (put there I guess accidently or on purpose).

Hmmmmm, great schools think alike, eh Chanubi?
 
Eeeeeep!

My posts have gone mad!

:confused:

Sorry about the double post!
 
raven said:
Hmmmmm, great schools think alike, eh?

Naw, it weren't banned here, even after the miscallaneous injuries sustained by various children over the years... But I can understand snowball fights being banned, that snow stuff is suprisingly hard... :(
 
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