YOUR LIFT CABLE BROKE

Lifts are the safest motorised transport you can use. Nearly all lift accidents are due to “operator error”. (Safety tips: don’t squeeze your way into closing lift doors and don’t try to climb out of a stuck lift.)

Part of the reason lifts are so safe is thanks to the safety brake, invented by Elisha Graves Otis in 1853. The safety brake is on the lift car itself and allows a lift to stop even if the cable is severed.

Should the impossible happen and your lift plummets from the top of a skyscraper, you wouldn’t necessarily die.

With a bit of luck, and because of a few freaks of physics, you could survive.

A lift free-falling from 170 storeys would hit the ground at 305km/h – an almost certainly fatal speed. But if you’re lucky, your lift fits snugly in its shaft. If that’s the case, the air below won’t be able to escape fast enough, creating a pillow of pressure like a soft airbag that could slow your descent.

That would help, but you’d still need to do more to survive. Gradually slowing your stop is the key to reducing the g-forces on your body.

Your best chance is to load your entire body evenly. Do not jump. Even if you somehow, magically, jumped an instant before you hit, you would reduce your impact speed only by a few kilometres an hour.

And when you crashed, your organs would break from their arterial moorings and push their way down through your body.

Best idea? Lie on your back. It’s the best way to bring your body to a stop without causing an organ pile-up.