If asked what the safest means of transport is, you might probably say “Flying”. Well, you are right! Flying is the safest means of transport. This is supported by a research carried out by Ian Savage, a professor in the department of economics at Northwestern University.By expressing different transportation methods in terms of deaths per billion passenger miles traveled, Savage found that flying was the safest mode of transport with just 0.07 deaths per one billion passenger miles.
Do you know that every three (3) days, elevators carry the equivalent of the Earth’s population? With a global population of 7.4 billion, that’s a lot of elevator trips! This makes safety a critical performance criterion for elevators.
Modern-day elevators are fitted with several safety devices which prevent them from free-falling and crashing. Compared to any other vehicular systems, elevators’ safety record is second to none, which make them extremely safe.
For those who are wary of taking the elevator and are comfortable with other means of transportation, consider these findings:
- For comparison, while 27 people die in U.S. elevators annually, an equal number are killed in car accidents every six or seven hours.
- Approximately 1,600 people die annually from falling down the stairs, according to data from the Center for Disease Control's National Center for Health Statistics
Considering all these factors, the elevator still remains the safest form of mass transport in the world.
Some of the safety measures put into the elevator system that make them one of the safest modes of transportation.
- A standard elevator contains several cables (up to eight), and each can hold the weight of a fully loaded car plus twenty-five percent more weight.
- In addition, there is a device which detects whether the elevator is descending faster than its maximum designed speed. If this happens, an automatic braking system near the top and bottom of the shaft engages the braking shoes to clamp down along the vertical rail of the shaft. These brakes are electromagnetically operated.
- At the bottom of the shaft is a heavy-duty shock absorber system designed to save passengers if all else fails.
So when next you use an elevator, consider yourself safe and secured.
