American Survival Guide

UP AND RUN­NING

- Employment · Society · Bureau of Labor Statistics · United States of America

EL­E­VA­TORS ARE MUCH SAFER THAN YOU THINK

Even though thou­sands of peo­ple have anx­i­ety con­cern­ing ev­ery as­pect of an el­e­va­tor, the truth is that they are, by far, ex­tremely safe. Sus­tain­ing an in­jury or dy­ing while rid­ing one is ex­tremely rare. Ac­cord­ing to the U.S. Bu­reau of La­bor Sta­tis­tics, there are about 30 fa­tal el­e­va­tor ac­ci­dents ev­ery year, which in­cludes el­e­va­tors and es­ca­la­tors, with only about half of them be­ing pas­sen­gers. The other half are work­ers who fell down the shaft or got caught in mov­ing parts.

In­juries from el­e­va­tors in­clude peo­ple get­ting caught be­tween the doors as they close and los­ing their bal­ance as the el­e­va­tor lifts or de­scends. On av­er­age, there are about 900,000 el­e­va­tors op­er­at­ing in the United States to­day, with 325 mil­lion rides ev­ery day. In­ter­est­ingly enough, many peo­ple fear el­e­va­tors and take the stairs, but stair-re­lated deaths av­er­age a stag­ger­ing 12,000 per year.

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