| Door detectors: The mechanical and light detectors are safety devices meant to prevent the doors from closing in on something that might come in between the doors. These are safety devices to take care of an eventuality and not to be tested by users.
Users tend to use this to hold the elevator. Children like to play “catch me if you can” with these doors.
Landing doors:In cities with limited playing area, the lift lobby becomes the favorite cricket pitch and even as a football ground. The lift doors then double up as the wicket or the goal. And if that is not forceful enough, lift lobbies tend to be ideal places for horseplay.
As per codes the visible door panels and the invisible components that hold the panels in place are designed to withstand a thrust of up to 345N applied normally. The rider here is “applied normally”, which with age and improper maintenance could deteriorate. Even when a new door, it is not up to kids to test that the code has been complied with.
In this situation, the impact of a football or a person crashing into a door can be disastrous.
Elevator Car:
The elevator car panels often double up as a graffiti board. This however causes no real problem other than embarrassment of sorts.
The problem starts when the car is used as a trampoline or even worse when the car panels become tested as stress relievers.
The same rule that applies to the door panels apply to the car as well.
Elevator Control Panels:
The elevator control panels and buttons are the few controls within the user’s reach. Since they are normally of lower voltage, and assuming that the grounding (earthing) is proper, the chances of serious injury are low. On the other hand it should be left to the experts to verify the properness of the grounding.
However the damaged buttons causes inconvenience to other users.
Manual collapsible gates:
Collapsible gates expose the lift shaft to the outside world. There have been instances where the traveling cables have been hooked out from inside the shaft and tied up, leading to serious damage when the lift moves.
Partial Knowledge & Curiosity:
The partial awareness children gain through observing lift technicians or the security guards doing something on the lift combined with curiosity (or bravado) is the worst combination and sure recipe for disaster.
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