The "door close" button in elevators doesn't close the door.

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NewTime
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12 Nov 2017, 4:47 pm

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Pressing the door-close button on an elevator might make you feel better, but it will do nothing to hasten your trip.

Karen W. Penafiel, executive director of National Elevator Industry Inc., a trade group, said the close-door feature faded into obsolescence a few years after the enactment of the Americans With Disabilities Act in 1990.

The legislation required that elevator doors remain open long enough for anyone who uses crutches, a cane or wheelchair to get on board, Ms. Penafiel said in an interview on Tuesday. “The riding public would not be able to make those doors close any faster,” she said.

The buttons can be operated by firefighters and maintenance workers who have the proper keys or codes.

No figures were available for the number of elevators still in operation with functioning door-close buttons. Given that the estimated useful life of an elevator is 25 years, it is likely that most elevators in service today have been modernized or refurbished, rendering the door-close buttons a thing of the past for riders, Ms. Penafiel said.

Take heart, though: The door-open buttons do work when you press them.


https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/28/us/p ... walks.html



nick007
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12 Nov 2017, 11:00 pm

I don't understand the point in having a "door close" button if it doesn't close the door. I don't get why firefighters & maintenance workers would need to close the door fast often enough that elevators still have those buttons.


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Kiriae
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13 Nov 2017, 5:00 pm

nick007 wrote:
I don't get why firefighters & maintenance workers would need to close the door fast often enough that elevators still have those buttons.

It's probably for situations where the elevator was stuck between floors and it can't move because the door are open(safety mechanizm won't let it move while open). The door won't close automatically in that case because they only do so in moments they are programmed to so firefighters & maintenance workers need to force close them.

Maintenances workers also need to open and close the door for testing and checking what's wrong with their mechanizm - they turn off the automatic door close feature during that times because it would interfere with their work.



Utopia97
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13 Nov 2017, 6:08 pm

Doors close buttons seem to work perfectly fine in the UK - though by default, they remain open automatically for around ten seconds at least unless someone presses the door close button.

Most, if not all, lifts/elevators I've been on have motion sensors on the doors - if someone steps through the doors as they are closing, they will stop and re-open fully. As long as the sensors detect something between the doors, they will not close.


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nick007
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14 Nov 2017, 3:35 am

Kiriae wrote:
nick007 wrote:
I don't get why firefighters & maintenance workers would need to close the door fast often enough that elevators still have those buttons.

It's probably for situations where the elevator was stuck between floors and it can't move because the door are open(safety mechanizm won't let it move while open). The door won't close automatically in that case because they only do so in moments they are programmed to so firefighters & maintenance workers need to force close them.

Maintenances workers also need to open and close the door for testing and checking what's wrong with their mechanizm - they turn off the automatic door close feature during that times because it would interfere with their work.
This makes sense Thanx for the info


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18 Nov 2017, 2:07 am

That's why I bring my own SLAMITQUICK button with me, it's a 99thfloor godsend of a device, I got it from that phone number they put at the end of the advert, it's never too late to convert to the deliverators, no more deliberating on what to tap when the situation becomes dire and they are getting closer to your rectangle of rust.



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18 Nov 2017, 1:50 pm

The same thing is true of many pedestrian crossings. The number of people pressing the "waiting to cross" button makes absolutely no difference to how long they have to wait to cross. At crossings that are almost permanently in use, the button may do nothing at all except light up the "WAIT" indicator.

The reason for the pointless button is down to psychology. People generally feel less impatient and frustrated when they feel like they have some kind of control over a situation, so you give them a button to press to make them feel involved in the decision making. Most people have no way to know how long they would have waited if they didn't press the button, so the fact that it does nothing is not noticed and they feel the illusion of being in control.


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Kiriae
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20 Nov 2017, 3:59 pm

Trogluddite wrote:
The same thing is true of many pedestrian crossings. The number of people pressing the "waiting to cross" button makes absolutely no difference to how long they have to wait to cross. At crossings that are almost permanently in use, the button may do nothing at all except light up the "WAIT" indicator.

The reason for the pointless button is down to psychology. People generally feel less impatient and frustrated when they feel like they have some kind of control over a situation, so you give them a button to press to make them feel involved in the decision making. Most people have no way to know how long they would have waited if they didn't press the button, so the fact that it does nothing is not noticed and they feel the illusion of being in control.


Me and a crowd, waiting at a crowded pedestrian crossing. Waiting. And waiting. And waiting.
Me: Did anybody press the button?
A person standing nearest to the button: Umm... No? <presses the button>
Me: ... :roll:
Green lights up. We cross.

So the button actually makes a difference, even on crowded crossings. You can't just assume someone else pressed it because everyone else might think so too. And you can't really see if the "Wait" is blinking when someone is standing next to the button. So you have a choice - assume they did or press it too, just in case.

And even at crowded crossings there are times when noone is crossing (early morning, middle of night and maybe 2-3 times every hour during the day) so it can't really be automatic because it would mean cars would have to waste 1 min on an empty red light and there is a lot of crossings like this one after another so passing the city would be very frustrating for the driver that could just pass it 100kms/h within 3 mins if no red light was on his way and about 15 mins if he met all reds.



Trogluddite
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20 Nov 2017, 4:13 pm

^^ Perfectly correct, of course. Got the "number of people pressing" (crossing) and "one person pressing" (lift) bits jumbled up somewhere when I wrote that somehow. Apologies for the brain fart, and thanks for picking it up! :oops:


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21 Nov 2017, 8:40 pm

No such legislation in the UK, however some of the lifts here were imported from the US so we get that issue.


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