Design error! A system like this should have built in safeguards that prevent reversal when there is any load detected.

Anyone know if there are escalators with variable speeds?

Skeptical_Geezer

I wonder what the Japanese police are shooting the crimescene photos with, the EOS -7D Mark I?

markarian

@and once they have a taste for blood there is no turning back.

Just like bears... WHAT ONE MAN CAN DO, ANOTHER CAN DO

ALT

@nutbastard: lol

Ariel_Wollinger

Maybe if they didn't put so many people on the escalator... I just don't understand Japanese crowds.

GenericWhiteGuy

HADOUKEN!!!!

Ariel_Wollinger

@zed0:

the video is directed at you, whoops.

nutbastard

@Jimbles: Only this time its "Escalator temporarily Six Flags Roller Coaster. Sorry for the thrill ride."

LastVigilante

+ Watch video

nutbastard

@Passions:

you should add it here:

[en.wikipedia.org]

as it is not listed as being an ethnic slur by that great tome of truth.

nutbastard

@DarthTader: Escalator temporarily stairs, sorry for the convenience.

-Mitch Hedberg

Jimbles

code error

kimiwapetto

You usually don't see this kind of stuff outside of Hindu & Moslem temple venues!!!...

sfokevin

oh noes! the escalator is going backwards, how do we get off now?

zed0

cool thing about japan is, if something happens, it's generally on camera from 2 or 3 different angles.

god bless the cute little shutterbugs.

nutbastard

whiteknight, orientals is a derogatory word. Please refrain from using it.

Passions

I really love how they cant just figure out how to get off. Like the universe has been turned upside down because its going backward band you cant get off.

I was on one that had something like this to happen and I just stepped off and took the stairs.

archercc

@DarthTader: *thought Wow, I'm having a bad day.

DarthTader

@BongoFury: yeah... especially when there parents bought em croc shoes...

urbanturban666

Beware the escalator at Atlanta's Hartsfield Int'l Airport... it likes to nibble on yummy childrens' feet.

www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/atlanta/stories/2008/07/31/escalator_foot_injury.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13

BongoFury

@DarthTader: *escalators *something

DarthTader

@whiteknight: 42

And I though escalator never broke, they only became stairs. Well, I learned somthing today.

DarthTader

was the escalator made by SKYNET!?!?!

urbanturban666

This happened when I was riding Metro in DC a few months back. Walking towards it and heard this commotion. It decided to reverse itself then stop. Not as cool as this video though. No pile up on the floor. Just people trying to walk backwards.

some_stupid_nut

@agscala: Mission accomplished.

SinAmos

Seriously, i am never riding a crowded escalator ever again.

tucker

The load was too much I'd say.

aelver

So if it takes like a hundred orientals to take out an escalator how many overloaded, obese, American hyper-consumers would it take to make an escalator revolt? Or do they just make 'em bigger in the US?

whiteknight

What happened??

agscala

Machine identification number: B77w33.
Mission: Sabotage gluttonous consumers.

SinAmos

They need to invest in some emergency stop buttons.

Joseph

Fail.

DaveExile

@i_prefer_sasquatch: You mean down there were there are 10 people lying on top of each other and more are trying to get onto the stairs all the same? Yup, sure is.

BoinK

@Skeptical_Geezer: Variable speed escalators mean that there are controls to adjust said speed. If you turn the up escalator to about 60 MPH, get a pair of skis, and ride down it, can you sue the idiot who buit the escalator's safety device when it suddenly stops and leaves you whizzing down the escalator into a crowd of laughing bystanders?

kanon

so here is a little tip...just like when you are going up the escalator and you get to the end, start to walk and get off....if it happens to change directions on you and go the other way, make sure you walk off at the bottom. so stupid...who sits there and waits to just falll? Seriously, i can understand the 10th guy who is just coming towards a wall of fallen people...but that first old lady...why did she just fall down? your going 1 mph..... or i guess in their case 2 kmh..... fucking walk!

QAdam

@Skeptical_Geezer: Maybe the machine interpreted the weight as a mechanism jam and reversed? Seems like maybe it's a safety feature?

Pope John Peeps II

In Stephen King's declining years, his epic tales grew less and less terrifying. Among them were:

"The Bruising of Bus Tour 38"
"The Escalatoring"
"The Tumbleknockers"

Pope John Peeps II

@Skeptical_Geezer: I know for a fact that some escalators at stadiums can go different speeds. They set them to go faster when people are leaving to get them out quicker.

stonefry

Aren't there usually great big red buttons at the base and top of escalators that one could hit to immediately stop it? Like, down by where the escalator meets the floor?

i_prefer_sasquatch

And to think all this was started by someone wearing Crocs.

BiZarRroBALlmeR

Hmm, u think they'd just turn around like they were going DOWN the escalator.

P3nnst8r has returned on the Graces of Brian Ashcraft

Did Wee-Man from Jackass have to do anything with this?

SaturnV

@nutbastard: That was thisclose to being a hilarious porno.

twoeightnine

Yes, the funny thing is that even well into the event some people hadn't turned around and they were still taking it backwards and stepping off backwards in an awkward fashion. Strange.

TallManNY

Heh yeah, "inexplicably" started going in the wrong direction, and there -just happened- to be someone there filming the escalator, ready to capture the whole thing. Of course, this is Japan so I suppose it is not out of the question that there was someone filming an escalator.

SawiniMessalla

That kid is still sitting on the escalator!!!!

Chester_Copperpot

Why is everyone saying "it suddenly decided to go in reverse"? Chances are, it didn't.
What most likely happened is that the motor gave up/broke and the brakes were insufficient or, simply, didn't activate.

What would a loaded escalator do with no breaks or motor? Bring them all back down as quickly as friction allows. Hence the huge pool of people at the bottom.

Endain

It felt like 9/11 all over again! Why were the people acting like the escalator was on fire or something. I don't understand why they didn't just turn around and walk off of it like they would if they were taking the escalator down? Very strange.

Siouxperman

@whiteknight:
i saw no rugs, vases, or works of art on that escalator.

anyways... i go to japan every other month, and i never get to see cool stuff like this happening. argh.. i was just in Tokyo the other week, i always miss the fun. and the time before that, i missed that psycho street stabber guy by like 1 day!!! WTF?!

djadamjay

I could definitely see the same thing happening if it was in the US...just with a lot more pushing. Yes, it's only going about 2mph. However, if it suddenly switches direction, the people at the back probably aren't expecting it and could easily fall over or get disoriented. Once 1 or 2 people fall, with it being so crowded, the rest are like dominoes. What are you going to do? Climb over everybody else's body on the ground? It's not a matter of just turning around and walking the other direction (only the first few people could do that, and they would have been the ones caught off-guard).

geowrian

@humorbot: I'm sorry this joke was lost on everyone based on the fact you forgot Asian's tend to replace L's with R's and not the other way around.

Jackson

The escalator was working fine. Time was just going backwards. I blame the Large Hadron Collider.

ljj

@whiteknight: "Orientals?" Me so solly you have forgotten this is 2008, not 1954.

humorbot

@djadamjay: i saw no russians, indians, or anybody from the middle east in that video. saying asian is just as stupid as oriental. you wouldnt say a scottsman is british would you?

on topic - that has got to be the largest escalator i have ever seen. when watching the video where the people were falling i kept thinking "are more people getting on at the top", then i saw the whole thing, it looks as though it takes you up 40 feet at least.

rainsfather

i want to add that the T4 'real skynet' marketing and promotion would start out small, then "escalate"
bad joke, but i couldn't help myself

cy3

It Begins. 'insert Terminator Theme'
That would b new and interesting marketing for T4 - having all machines start wreaking havoc.

That is a huge ass escalator. U'd think that since a lot of ppl go there and use the escalator, the speed would b higher so that it's less crowded. Also, the weight limit wouldn't b exceeded.

I like how ppl were jumping off the side.

I think it'd b interesting to c the down escalator going in reverse. ppl would pile up at the top, then when there's no room left, ppl start falling down the now-up escalator

cy3

Reminds me of Maximum Overdrive.

AJ_Syrinx

Everyone's a little bit racist, sometimes...

Xavoc

@ljj: You mean like in this book: [en.wikipedia.org]

Petezah

@humorbot:

yeah. your attempt was ridicurous.

nutbastard

@nutbastard: Yes, but how long until Japanese children come with built-in flashes?

Xavoc

Was it because of a kid in crocs?.... What are they taking pictures of exactly btw? Caught human toes?....

Ambiguous Blob 2.0

Lets see they usually have controls even for direction on some located at one end. All it takes is a one or two button press to reverse the unit. Then the rest is large groups of people.

Seriously its not like it went nuts it just reversed direction. People unable to react = pile up.

Never mind that in Japan they tend to overload the crap outta stuff....case and point the subway...where they pay guys to shove and pack people onto the trains.

Then you wonder why this happens.

Wowwzers

What actually happened? Did some pranksters hit a button at the two ends? Did it start moving when people tried to walk up a stopped esculator?

pri_them2

Escalators have changed...

Pablos102030

I wish the escalators on the D.C. metro would start doing this every time some bonehead violated the "walk left, stand right" rule. That would teach 'em.

Quietly

I think the situation is made funnier by the fact that they are all a bunch of confused looking Asians.

UgoBogdan

@Woden501: Hence, FailBlog.

The commentators above who are laughing at the people in the video for falling down need to watch it again. It looks like when it first starts moving downwards, it's going pretty fast and only slows down several seconds later. Also, if someone near the top falls down -> domino effect.

Xenobiologista

@whiteknight: 6

enchantedgoose

Notice how the Japanese people in the crowd went to help the people who were about to get crushed under the crowd being forced down upon them by the escalator... in the US the entire crowd would just be sitting there laughing with their thumbs up their as*es.

Woden501

@Wowwzers: all the escalators i have seen have a huge red stop button and then need a key to change the direction. this looks more like it overloaded than anything. if you look the one that is supposed to go down is moving much faster than the one that is broke.

rainsfather

yet another reason to use the stairs.

BiZarRroBALlmeR

F'n Asian's don't know how to queue.

PittsburghEatsOhioFarts

Why the heck were there that many people on an escalator at one time anyway?

Andrew

I welcome our vertical conveyor overlords.

vorstellung

@Jackson @nutbastard: I'm not really sure what capital there is to be gained by dissecting the linguistics of a tasteless joke, but here goes. Most Asian tongues have no equivalent of the English L consonant; this is true. They may have an R sound, but paradoxically this is often pronounced much closer to the English L than the English R in everyday speech. Japanese, which I studied for two years, is a perfect example. Thus "solly."

Regardless, I can't take credit for that zinger anyway. Blame Krusty the Clown:

[www.simpsoncrazy.com]

For that matter, neither can the Simpsons writers, who were only parodying decades of Asian stereotypes in film, blah blah blah, you know the rest of this argument...

humorbot

i love how everybody panics as if there is a crazy man with an automatic rifle taking them out...

an1m3fr33k

Every time I see a video from Japan it is always of too many people on or using a transportation device. Whether it is a subway, elevator or escalator? Even the videos of swimming pools are packed with too many people. Do people in Japan like crowds or something? Crap - if I saw all those people on an escalator I would take the stairs.

hardenstuhl

this is worse than lemmings.

Neverkilled: Robot Jones, mechanical tyranical

@an1m3fr33k:

The next version of the escelator has an auto-turret for that.

Neverkilled: Robot Jones, mechanical tyranical

Obviously AP was behind this!

bitgod

Is it bad that I was thinking What if I pushed over the first row of people on a normal day... instead of focusing on the obvious that it was a crazy japanese game show?

Con Seannery

Was this Wonder Fesstival?

When Japanese see an elevator has a 10 man capacity, they think it's 10man. (10 people vs 10万)

Channing

DA RIZE OF DA MACHINEZ IZ UPONZ US!! DEY SAW DA TERMINATOR PREVIEWZZ. AND DEY ARE READY. FighT DA POWA.

hedgehogbe

Although I doubt anyone is going to read this, I live in Japan and what happened is that there was a festival going on in the building, so there was a lot more people than usual. As a result, the escalator had maybe double the normal load and completely failed (I'm assuming, without proof, that something important broke). Whatever emergency braking system there is, it took a few seconds to kick in.

It's not clear in the video, but if you look at the very beginning you'll see the reversed escalator (the one on the right, for the numbskulls that don't realize that's the one that's broken) is going twice the speed of the left elevator (that is going down at normal speed). When it reversed direction, it was so unexpected that most people fell forward onto each other. It's quite difficult to stand back up in a crowded situation, which is why people were still facing forward (gotta stand up first, then turn around).

The last people that got on had no chance to pick themselves up before the escalator dumped them on the floor at the bottom. The next few people didn't have a chance to react before they were dumped onto the first people, not to mention they couldn't see their own feet or where the escalator stops and the floor starts due to the crowding. Within a second there was an unavoidable pileup and it wasn't anyone's fault. The first ones to hit the bottom were crushed and injured and couldn't get away, the others had no escape route and had no choice but to ride the thing down into the pileup.

We take escalators for granted because we use them daily. When on an escalator, most people aren't thinking about the safety of the ride, they are chatting or thinking about other things. When something breaks like this, no one is prepared to react in the fraction of a second that it takes for something to break.

So, all you people laughing at this (either publicly or secretly), you are all jerks. A lot of people got injured and it isn't their fault. I guess I'm one of those rare people that don't take pleasure in other people's pain or misfortune.

Ravlen

Yet another reason why you should not stand, but WALK on an escalator! Stupid lazy-ass humans. Serves them right.

indorock

police are investigating who toggled the "up" switch to "down"

discounteggroll

@Ravlen: Yes, Yes you are. There is something that makes it extremly satisying to watch people fall down in a most ridiculous fashion, even if they cant help it. Almost as fun as walking into an alzheimers home and going to all the old ladies saying "Grandma Grandma its my birthday, you did'nt forget did you," Then they give you money and you walk away and do it all over again : )

Storm490

at the :23 mark, i could have sworn i heard that gentleman yell "I REGRET NOTHING!"

WildWon

How long will it take for Fox to create a new show???

When Escalators Attack!

Bobby T.

Something like this happened at Coors Field in Denver in 2003. Passengers overloaded an escalator that was going down when it suddenly started to accelerate unchecked. There was a problem with the electronics that detect an overspeed condition and the brakes failed to engage. Dozens had broken bones and head injuries.

Unfortunately there either wasn't video or it wasn't released. It would have been fun to watch (no one was critically injured).

[www.thedenverchannel.com]

DamiusX

The real culprit here is lack of personal space...

stradric

@rainsfather: "Oriental" is considered offensive because its contrast "occidental" is no longer used to refer to people, but rather to objects. Both words can, technically, be used to describe with physical object (oriental rugs, occidental art) or people (Oriental, Occidental). However, for the most part, occidental has left the lexicon as anything other than a description for objects.

So, Asians have come to the conclusion that "oriental" is an offensive description, even though "Asian" is a very broad description that includes Russians, etc. It also, obviously, correctly includes South East Asians.

Being "Asian," I am of mixed minds. On the one had, I recognize that "Oriental" and "Occidental" are correct descriptors for racial classification, even if one is no longer used. On the other hand, "Asian" is somewhat overly broad. So, I usually just say I'm Japanese-American and be done with it.

In either event, I prefer either term to "Mongloid." If you use that towards me, expect a swift kick in the vocabulary.

On an unrelated note, I was in Japan and I saw a girl take a header all the way down a very long set of subway steps. Not because she was drunk, but because was wearing 6" platform heels. Some times, technology and culture to not mix nicely.

makanai

There was an article in the New York Times a few months ago about escalator problems in subway stations like when an escalator drive mechanism failed and sent passengers on a very quick ride to the bottom.

littlesoda

I've seen this happen before. It's what happens when a brainless jackass stops at the bottom to figure out where's she's going.

It wasn't wasn't pretty. Plus it took myself (about 30 people later) to get to the bottom and hit the emergancy stop button. But I must confess, I have intimate knowledge of the stop button seeing as how I was a little bastard way back when and used to hit it just for fun.

People are such ignorant fools these days.

JEmlay

@whiteknight: orientals? you're stupid. it says "TOKYO CONVENTION CENTER" in the damn title.

syosh

i hope this wasnt just an overload and that some genius had something to do with it. Or maybe it was just poorly engineered to go in reverse instead of just stopping when it got overloaded.

l4crosse

@Xavoc: so, that means you should keep using the word?

Why say oriental? Why not just say Japanese?

Ypoknons