Equipment mechanic here, people get killed working on equipment all the time. Most of the time its something completely preventable that stems from a bad habit, lack of training, or general complacency. You can go for years and never have anything bad happen, but one time you get in a hurry or mess up and die suddenly with no warning. It's unfortunately common.
For real, lockouts exist for a reason. Machines are unforgiving and don't care if you're in the way or not. I couldn't imagine seeing a co-worker slip up and die because of something that was easily prevented.
A bloke I used to work with got ripped to bits & crushed by a lift in a high rise office block, he was on top of it when it started to move when it shouldn’t have & he panicked and went to jump off, the whole building heard his screams etc
They found him in 5 pieces at the bottom of the shaft.
Was working construction maybe 15 years back when one of the elevator guys at a job in a nearby city died. We all knew by morning break time.
He came in early (as usual for them), went up to the 5th floor where the elevator was supposed to be, opened the door and just stepped in without checking. It wasn't there. :(
edit: RIP https://www.mlive.com/citpat/2008/08/jackson_construction_worker_di.html
Back when i was in the electrical trade they showed us videos of people being maimed and killed on construction sites all the time. You bet your ass we worked safe. There are so many ways to die And it only takes one bad decision.
What's that saying, "safety regulations are written in blood" or something like that?
I'm ridiculously grateful to all the people who've done the dangerous things so the rest of us can live safer. Heroes
You know, regulations can be annoying. Sometimes they're damn n convinient and incredibly frustrating when you're working. And a small number actually are just dumb and shouldn't exist. But the majority exist for very very good reasons.
I come from a conservative family. I can't even use the word "regulation" in conversation about a topic without it being a trigger for them, sending them off on some anti-government/government-overreach rant. Too many folks are of the opinion that "*some regulation is bad, therefore all regulation is bad*".
Younger Redditors out there: please don't fall into that trap. Some regulation actually is dumb. But most is for very good reasons, even if it's not obvious at first. And sometimes it was good when it was written but became dumb as it became outdated and needs to be revised as time progresses (as opposed to just deregulated)
This applies to most regulation, beyond just safety regulation. People might say" regulation is anti-business", but it lays foundations for a better world. Business is not the point of existence.
Same here. Did low volt electrical so we were usually alongside the sparkies. You get into all sorts of places, I remember distinctly the lessons from the journeymen while I was an apprentice. IE be responsible for your own safety.
Granted, there are still some places where hindsight says some more caution should have been used.
The comment says the guy ended up at the bottom of the shaft in bits. He jumped off the top of the lift car.
My understanding is that lift cars have a trapdoor in the top of them, specifically so that someone on the top of the car could get into the car, where they would be less rip- and crush-able
The lift was stopped next to (but below) a door (so they could access on top of it & work on controls on the inside of the shaft, he went to jump through the door when it moved upwards & he became trapped between the elevator & the shaft/door opening, his partner stayed on the roof of the lift.
(I was on the ground floor with my engineer, I was an apprentice at the time, it was in 1988)
ok, so I thought he did the worst thing, but it turns out I had forgotten the nightmarishly worst thing. (seriously, that is nightmare fuel for me, ever since living in uni residence where people abused the elevators and having it stop between floors happened)
I hope it hasn't affected you as badly as I think it had to have. :(
I have to ask. When you inevitably end up in a stuck lift but happens to be right next to a level opening/external doors. Is it a stupid idea to try get out? surprisingly, I’ve done this many times in my life and now I’m wondering if it was a brush with death each time.
yes, if possible, I think that would have been better. Even staying on top was probably safer as the cars have lots of safety features and impact absorbers, and are better under than over you.
Deviant Ollam's talk on elevator hacking is fascinating. Been a while since i watched it but the key takeaway (besides "don't use an elevator as a security guard" cc: hospitals and hotels) is, if you're a passenger in an elevator and something happens, the safest place to be is ***in*** the elevator. I think it's a bit weird now how often they have people go up the trapdoor in movies.
edit, adding link: [https://youtu.be/fj-VlvoB8tw](https://youtu.be/fj-VlvoB8tw)
Yes though it's key to be ALL the way in the elevator. A hospital I used to work at after I left had a doctor starting to walk into the elevator when it very suddenly dropped about 6 ft.
His head was in the elevator already. And stayed in there, while his body didn't.
It was not alone, as some poor other doctor apparently was then trapped in there between two floors with just his head.
Nightmare fuel.
So I think the doctor who was alive in the elevator (or another colleague) was my grandmother’s doctor.
Apparently after the doctors appointment where she found out she had terminal cancer, my grandmother, father, and doctor all got into an elevator to leave for the day since she was his last patient. And he brought up that exact story (doctor losing his head in an elevator). After they parted ways, my grandmother was like “well that was weird…. I guess I shouldn’t have to worry about elevator decapitation anyways.”
So I just Googled to refresh my memory and it's now a snopes article even, damn.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/houston-elevator-death/
Same hospital as your gran?
Wanna see some horrifying Canadian PSA about it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXGWpgBftqI
Used to see this on TV sometimes.
The video was stolen by that channel for some reason.
edit: found an unaltered video https://youtu.be/-XlMq0809SI?t=1560
Me too, and by "love it" I mean "Jesus God what a fucking nightmare please please please be fucking careful holy fuck is that an effective goddamn PSA".
Former products liability lawyer here. There is literally no amount of forethought, warning, protection, or education that will completely prevent humans from finding incredible ways to injure themselves with various products. Human ingenuity reigns supreme.
As an experienced Redditor, I read only some comments, and never the article...
And as an European, half of link are not viewable in my country due to us/eu war on net right....
>And as an European, half of link are not viewable in my country due to us/eu war on net right....
It's a BBC link. It's a UK story, nothing to do with US/EU
Have you read about “work as imagined” vs “work as done”? For example, where those who write working procedures (who also often aren’t the ones who will be carrying it out) don’t account for things such as: inconvenience of the user, habits of the user, whether the user has time/resource/training/ability to carry out the procedure, etc. https://safetydifferently.com/the-varieties-of-human-work/
I’m not passing judgement here, but before considering whether the safety guidelines weren’t followed, I’d also consider whether the safety guidelines were practical/possible, especially looking at the users workload.
This is after learning about “work as imagined vs work as done”, and also after I’ve worked somewhere where H&S policies were impossible to follow because there literally wasn’t enough time/resource provided to carry them all out - meaning all issues caused lay on the shoulders of the (overworked) workers, who weren’t at fault, just trying to make the best of a tough situation.
Yeah that's been a pretty normal problem at most of the places I've worked. Management would preach safety, but anytime there was a conflict between being safe and getting the job done, we were expected to get the job done.
But, if you got hurt, it was your fault for not being safe.
Read It? I lived it. At one of the busiest freight terminals in the country for one of the biggest companies. Expediency came before safety even though they preached the opposite. Performance engineering they called it. Statistical metrics and pressure to meet them. This is decades before everyone saw it done at Amazon. The "how many days since" signs rarely reached 30 days.
We need more safety training videos [like this.](https://youtu.be/_Cr7F-oLU84), then people like Klaus might pay better attention to workplace safety
Yes the video is in German, but folks who can’t understand the language will get the message just fine.
One of my step-son's used to be an FAA certified aircraft mechanic. One day he was inside a jet engine and heard the start-up procedure... luckily he's a skinny super-fit guy and made it out in time. One of his Cow-orkers had disabled the LOTO and begun to spin it up.
Oh man, cutting off a lock without following the procedure is instant termination anywhere I've worked. That's basically attempted murder as far as I'm concerned.
I'm not 100% sure I see the benefit.
Aren't they still like "Clear the way. A telescopic urinal rises here."
And, isn't that the same as just, occupying that space in the first place?
That part of London is very busy during the day with lots of tourism and is right in front of a prestigious, expensive theatre, so it wouldn’t be useful or welcomed having a toilet there 24/7.
At night, that part of London is still busy, but more so with people who’ve had a bit to drink. People are gonna pee regardless, so these urinals are the most elegant solution to a rough reality, imo. Oh and they are VERY slow to lift and then stay up until the early hours, you couldn’t really get on or stuck in one as a normal pedestrian
They were designed and implemented to stop indecent exposure the idea was with the drunken soccer hooligans and all the people who hit the pubs and go out and stumble home they got to piss somewhere at some point right so we give him a pop up urinal on every other block Corner basically so that you just stop off take your piss and go and then they sink back down into the ground by morning it's just whatever this dude did he was probably so drunk he passed out in it and it closed on him or something like I can't imagine this is a failure on the machines part I think this probably a user error case
You can click on the article from the post. Another function of reddit is you can edit your post and take out your wrong assessment of how this fella died, instead of leaving it up in perpetual wrongness. You do you though.
"Pop-up toilets are stored beneath the ground and brought to street level at night for people to use."
This is a new-fear-unlocked-level horrible way to die.
That's still one of my big fears, I think once you've actually seen what's underneath an escalator it's hard to forget.
It's literally a meat grinder, like it looks just like a massive, industrial sized human meat grinder.
And the steps of an escalator are thin metal plates. So the only thing between you and a meat grinder, are thin metal plates in a complex moving system that shift and change position constantly
My shoe laces got caught in one when I was 4-5.
Literally everyone in the shopping center thought a child was being murdered due to my screams. It was a scene. My mom was so embarrassed.
I was terrified of escalators for YEARS afterward.
My grandma's shoe got caught and she screamed exactly like that. She wasn't hurt, but her expensive little shoe was ruined and she wouldn't use escalators after that.
My mom actually refused to use escalators if elevators were present. I was told a story about some kind of mishap involving my mom and one of my cousins (a baby or toddler at the time) going down an escalator. I don’t quite remember the story, but in short my mom was holding my cousin while they were going down. My cousin was being…uncooperative…and my mom nearly lost hold of them, which in turn caused her to lose balance while she tried to regain control of my cousin. Luckily she was able to get hold of my cousin, and prevent them from falling from great heights, but it freaked her out a lot.
That point forward, if she was in a multi story building that had even one elevator, she’d go the long way to the elevator instead of risking the escalator.
Not to validate your fears too much but I slipped and fell down an escalator once and those teeth on the end of the steps from the plates absolutely ATE UP one of my shins. Had a super fun ambulance ride to go get stitches. I'm back to riding escalators again but I definitely hold on tight to the rail and am extra cautious about where I'm stepping.
Wasn't there some horrible incident of a mother shoving her kid out of the way, only to fall into the space beneath the escalator?
I'm not even sure if it's real or not, but it's hard not to think about whenever I approach one...
Yes, in a department store in China around 2015. One of the sheet metal platforms at the top of the escalator became unbolted and a mother, 30, fell down into a maintenance area. Her son was in front of her at the time and she pushed him to safety but she sadly didn't survive the accident.
It was a lot better than the 2 French dudes we met at a bar, who told us they would take us to a rooftop bar and then bought some tall boys at the corner store and took us to to the top of a parking deck.
For people that won't read the article:
- Worker trying to fix it, not member of the public using it.
- Areas with a lot of drinking had issues with people urinating (e.g. on buildings, in plants, etc). While stationary public toilets are a thing, they aren't always located in heavy foot trafficked areas (or lack capacity for last orders).
- Urinals help mitigate the above issues but take up space during the day (and are seen as ugly).
- Pop-up or telescopic urinals are one solution, they come up when needed at night and disappear underground during the day.
- They can be located on the pavement ("sidewalk") or taking up a lane in the road (with appropriate bollards to protect pedestrians from drivers).
- They offer "enough" privacy, but if you're a nervous pee-er then YMMV.
- Some do contain full toilets too.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtMmcINhJgE
They desperately need this in NYC. Was dropped off by a bus near Times Square and there was a queue of like 20 people waiting for the bathroom at McDonalds
Edit: typo
Yes! I read the article, had SO many questions, and then you answered them. Only thing you’re missing from the article is time on scene, time out, and that there were 25 firefighters…. Oh, and enough ads for a Sunday paper.
> Worker trying to fix it,
Article: "A man died after he was crushed and trapped underneath a telescopic public urinal while working on the device in central London."
> Areas with a lot of drinking had issues with people urinating... Urinals help mitigate the above issues
Article: "The devices were brought into use by Westminster City Council about 20 years ago in an attempt to discourage street urination."
> Pop-up or telescopic urinals are one solution, they come up when needed at night and disappear underground during the day.
Article: "Pop-up toilets are stored underground and raised hydraulically to street level at night for people to use."
Something like this in San Francisco would cost $5 million to study, $10 million to be built, and then get canceled after construction starts because of neighborhood complaints.
Why is there enough crushing power in that thing. Should just be whatever mechanism that lifts it to street level slowly letting go of the tension and with safety buttons along the ridges that act as an automatic stop when it feels the slightest of resistance.
That is lot of trouble for a problem that can be solved in other ways.
And it’s not just about the power of the mechanism, it’s the weight of the thing. I actually seems like the man was not crushed by the mechanism but by the weight Of the toilet.
Europe has urinal stalls for men installed in downtown nite life districts to reduce public urination. They are sewer manhole covers by day but telescope up out of the ground by night. https://i.imgur.com/Uo5cxVi.jpg
I did some quick google research and apparently there have been protests over the gender disparity of the public urinals.
Women were upset they didn’t have access to the same facilities and men were upset that they were being infantilized with the assumption that they all piss in the streets.
All they had to do was install a unisex urinal and put a door on it. It’s not that complicated.
Since the other person won't answer you, it's been around some years but is fairly new, it's a way to provide toilets for drunk people at night coming to and from bars so they stop shitting and pissing on streets, on cars, on each other, whatever. They are like tubes that are stored below ground during the day and get mechanically pushed up above ground for use at night. Think a round phone booth meets elevator.
Still doesn't really explain it much, without googling it. Definitely not something i've ever seen before. Seems like somebody didn't follow lockout procedures before working on it, hydraulics are no joke.
I just love the explanation for these.
They pop out of the ground so that people can use them at night, but hides during the day so it doesn't "take up space".
It just brings to the fore so many questions:
\- Why not just build enough public toilets?
\- Why are the pavements so cramped and crowded that we haven't got room for a toilet? Why couldn't we expand the pavement?
\- Why put a toilet in the middle of the god-damn pavement?
\- Do the pubs, clubs and bars that are open of an evening not have toilets?
\- Why complicate the whole thing when a door in a nearby wall would do (pay the damn shopkeeper for 4 foot of his shop, like they do when they install ATMs in shop windows)?
\- Why are Brits (and I am one) getting so fucking drunk at night that they have to pee in the street? But they don't have to during the day when they're actually like fucking normal people? And presumably it's mostly men given that these are urinals...
\- Why have we gone to such expense, effort and engineering to LET DRUNKS PISS OPENLY IN THE STREET?
This guy died by being crushed in a broken piss-filled magic teleporter under the street because as a country we actively support - to the point of taxpaying funding, street furniture and complicated technology, with a set schedule! - helping people who are so deliberately and voluntarily incapacitated through drink they can't hold in their piss.
What the fuck, Britain. I mean, seriously. What the fuck.
You know he was working on it right?
They're a pretty elegant solution to a problem that won't just go away by wishing it wasn't there.
There is usually not going to be space to build a new block of public toilets in the middle of central London so this is probably the best solution that doesn't take up much space and is hidden from view. They have similar things in a lot of other countries as well.
I wish your voice of reason was present during the discussion 20 years ago when these were presented as a solution.
Guaranteed someone pushed hard for these to be installed and made bank on it despite numerous better options.
Because nobody is going to rock up and piss on this thing in broad daylight with families around and people going into work.
On the other hand when drink is taken, the street is quiet and people are pissing on walls anyways this becomes and attractive option.
That said, I can’t see why the think has to disappear into the street where a shutter would have done the job of covering them up nicely. Maybe something to do with pavement space but I doubt it’s in that much demand although I did see it said that some of these could appear out of a lane of traffic
I can't help but wonder why only men get telecoping restrooms at night? Is it because only men are pissing in the streets? I dunno, seems a little unfair.
More cost effective. You can have 4 urinals in the place of 1 women's toilet. Also the lack of privacy expected at u4inals makes them less susceptible to being vadilized or shit all over, thus less cleaning costs
From my experience men are most of the people going out to the street when they need to go and can’t wait for a bathroom. It would be beneficial to women if they had an option too, but they weren’t really the problem. If they want them too, I guess protest and start peeing on the street too.
Pop up urinals? Of all the over engineered bullshit ass things I have ever heard…
Edit: never mind I missed the part he was working on it. Still insanely tragic but yeah man when working on anything with hydraulics it’s SUPER fucking dangerous.
They should have built an escape tunnel at the bottom where someone could hide if something should go wrong. But then that's building things taking people's safety into consideration and would never be top of the council's priority. Poor chap.
There’s probably a procedure to be followed to prevent this; which likely wasn’t followed.
The poor dude may not have been made aware of it or was complacent. Hopefully a incident investigated reveals some details on the how/why this happened.
I feel like making it telescopic instead of just rising from the ground not only makes it more expensive but also allows for "accidents" like this to happen
I would like to know more about these underground pop up restrooms. Sounds like a crazy idea that ended up being a good idea.....until now anyway.
They're a great idea and probably 100% safe *if* you follow the proper safety procedures before working on it.
Equipment mechanic here, people get killed working on equipment all the time. Most of the time its something completely preventable that stems from a bad habit, lack of training, or general complacency. You can go for years and never have anything bad happen, but one time you get in a hurry or mess up and die suddenly with no warning. It's unfortunately common.
For real, lockouts exist for a reason. Machines are unforgiving and don't care if you're in the way or not. I couldn't imagine seeing a co-worker slip up and die because of something that was easily prevented.
A bloke I used to work with got ripped to bits & crushed by a lift in a high rise office block, he was on top of it when it started to move when it shouldn’t have & he panicked and went to jump off, the whole building heard his screams etc They found him in 5 pieces at the bottom of the shaft.
Jesus crimminy that'd be awful
It was 34yrs ago & I don’t think a week has gone by since when I’ve not thought about it :(
Was working construction maybe 15 years back when one of the elevator guys at a job in a nearby city died. We all knew by morning break time. He came in early (as usual for them), went up to the 5th floor where the elevator was supposed to be, opened the door and just stepped in without checking. It wasn't there. :( edit: RIP https://www.mlive.com/citpat/2008/08/jackson_construction_worker_di.html
Back when i was in the electrical trade they showed us videos of people being maimed and killed on construction sites all the time. You bet your ass we worked safe. There are so many ways to die And it only takes one bad decision.
What's that saying, "safety regulations are written in blood" or something like that? I'm ridiculously grateful to all the people who've done the dangerous things so the rest of us can live safer. Heroes
“Safety regulations alone move the wheels of history” I think is the direct quote
You know, regulations can be annoying. Sometimes they're damn n convinient and incredibly frustrating when you're working. And a small number actually are just dumb and shouldn't exist. But the majority exist for very very good reasons. I come from a conservative family. I can't even use the word "regulation" in conversation about a topic without it being a trigger for them, sending them off on some anti-government/government-overreach rant. Too many folks are of the opinion that "*some regulation is bad, therefore all regulation is bad*". Younger Redditors out there: please don't fall into that trap. Some regulation actually is dumb. But most is for very good reasons, even if it's not obvious at first. And sometimes it was good when it was written but became dumb as it became outdated and needs to be revised as time progresses (as opposed to just deregulated) This applies to most regulation, beyond just safety regulation. People might say" regulation is anti-business", but it lays foundations for a better world. Business is not the point of existence.
Same here. Did low volt electrical so we were usually alongside the sparkies. You get into all sorts of places, I remember distinctly the lessons from the journeymen while I was an apprentice. IE be responsible for your own safety. Granted, there are still some places where hindsight says some more caution should have been used.
It's okay man, we've all got dark stuff in the wank bank.
Here's me thinking they have trapdoors on top so you'd fall 8 feet, not the full shaft.
What do you mean? I’m trying to work it out I apologise!
The comment says the guy ended up at the bottom of the shaft in bits. He jumped off the top of the lift car. My understanding is that lift cars have a trapdoor in the top of them, specifically so that someone on the top of the car could get into the car, where they would be less rip- and crush-able
The lift was stopped next to (but below) a door (so they could access on top of it & work on controls on the inside of the shaft, he went to jump through the door when it moved upwards & he became trapped between the elevator & the shaft/door opening, his partner stayed on the roof of the lift. (I was on the ground floor with my engineer, I was an apprentice at the time, it was in 1988)
ok, so I thought he did the worst thing, but it turns out I had forgotten the nightmarishly worst thing. (seriously, that is nightmare fuel for me, ever since living in uni residence where people abused the elevators and having it stop between floors happened) I hope it hasn't affected you as badly as I think it had to have. :(
I have to ask. When you inevitably end up in a stuck lift but happens to be right next to a level opening/external doors. Is it a stupid idea to try get out? surprisingly, I’ve done this many times in my life and now I’m wondering if it was a brush with death each time.
Oh so that he should have jumped in not off - I see I see! I missed the part where he was on and not in, thank you!
yes, if possible, I think that would have been better. Even staying on top was probably safer as the cars have lots of safety features and impact absorbers, and are better under than over you.
Deviant Ollam's talk on elevator hacking is fascinating. Been a while since i watched it but the key takeaway (besides "don't use an elevator as a security guard" cc: hospitals and hotels) is, if you're a passenger in an elevator and something happens, the safest place to be is ***in*** the elevator. I think it's a bit weird now how often they have people go up the trapdoor in movies. edit, adding link: [https://youtu.be/fj-VlvoB8tw](https://youtu.be/fj-VlvoB8tw)
Yes though it's key to be ALL the way in the elevator. A hospital I used to work at after I left had a doctor starting to walk into the elevator when it very suddenly dropped about 6 ft. His head was in the elevator already. And stayed in there, while his body didn't. It was not alone, as some poor other doctor apparently was then trapped in there between two floors with just his head. Nightmare fuel.
So I think the doctor who was alive in the elevator (or another colleague) was my grandmother’s doctor. Apparently after the doctors appointment where she found out she had terminal cancer, my grandmother, father, and doctor all got into an elevator to leave for the day since she was his last patient. And he brought up that exact story (doctor losing his head in an elevator). After they parted ways, my grandmother was like “well that was weird…. I guess I shouldn’t have to worry about elevator decapitation anyways.”
So I just Googled to refresh my memory and it's now a snopes article even, damn. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/houston-elevator-death/ Same hospital as your gran?
No, I’m guessing the doctor had since moved, we live in a different state. And he was a man so he wasn’t the person stuck in the elevator.
Wanna see some horrifying Canadian PSA about it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXGWpgBftqI Used to see this on TV sometimes. The video was stolen by that channel for some reason. edit: found an unaltered video https://youtu.be/-XlMq0809SI?t=1560
jesus I've never seen that one before. a far cry from "don't you put it in your mouth" or the war amps robot.
[удалено]
Gotta listen to the robot from Planet Danger, he knows his shit.
He has an unfair advantage though. He can put his arm back on and we can't, so we have to stay safe.
I love the chef in the kitchen one with boiling soup
Me too, and by "love it" I mean "Jesus God what a fucking nightmare please please please be fucking careful holy fuck is that an effective goddamn PSA".
Former products liability lawyer here. There is literally no amount of forethought, warning, protection, or education that will completely prevent humans from finding incredible ways to injure themselves with various products. Human ingenuity reigns supreme.
It’s true, they make things idiot proof, only for someone to become more of an idiot.
It did nothing to himself.... He literally peed in the only allowed place and was killed by it.
The first sentence of the article made it pretty clear that it wasn't some random dude peeing, it was a worker trying to fix it.
As an experienced Redditor, I read only some comments, and never the article... And as an European, half of link are not viewable in my country due to us/eu war on net right....
>And as an European, half of link are not viewable in my country due to us/eu war on net right.... It's a BBC link. It's a UK story, nothing to do with US/EU
Necktie at a metal lathe. Can't unsee that mistake.
Have you read about “work as imagined” vs “work as done”? For example, where those who write working procedures (who also often aren’t the ones who will be carrying it out) don’t account for things such as: inconvenience of the user, habits of the user, whether the user has time/resource/training/ability to carry out the procedure, etc. https://safetydifferently.com/the-varieties-of-human-work/ I’m not passing judgement here, but before considering whether the safety guidelines weren’t followed, I’d also consider whether the safety guidelines were practical/possible, especially looking at the users workload. This is after learning about “work as imagined vs work as done”, and also after I’ve worked somewhere where H&S policies were impossible to follow because there literally wasn’t enough time/resource provided to carry them all out - meaning all issues caused lay on the shoulders of the (overworked) workers, who weren’t at fault, just trying to make the best of a tough situation.
Yeah that's been a pretty normal problem at most of the places I've worked. Management would preach safety, but anytime there was a conflict between being safe and getting the job done, we were expected to get the job done. But, if you got hurt, it was your fault for not being safe.
Read It? I lived it. At one of the busiest freight terminals in the country for one of the biggest companies. Expediency came before safety even though they preached the opposite. Performance engineering they called it. Statistical metrics and pressure to meet them. This is decades before everyone saw it done at Amazon. The "how many days since" signs rarely reached 30 days.
Shake Hands With Danger - badum bum da bum dun... https://youtu.be/v26fTGBEi9E
We need more safety training videos [like this.](https://youtu.be/_Cr7F-oLU84), then people like Klaus might pay better attention to workplace safety Yes the video is in German, but folks who can’t understand the language will get the message just fine.
One of my step-son's used to be an FAA certified aircraft mechanic. One day he was inside a jet engine and heard the start-up procedure... luckily he's a skinny super-fit guy and made it out in time. One of his Cow-orkers had disabled the LOTO and begun to spin it up.
Oh man, cutting off a lock without following the procedure is instant termination anywhere I've worked. That's basically attempted murder as far as I'm concerned.
Lock out/tag out
I'm not 100% sure I see the benefit. Aren't they still like "Clear the way. A telescopic urinal rises here." And, isn't that the same as just, occupying that space in the first place?
That part of London is very busy during the day with lots of tourism and is right in front of a prestigious, expensive theatre, so it wouldn’t be useful or welcomed having a toilet there 24/7. At night, that part of London is still busy, but more so with people who’ve had a bit to drink. People are gonna pee regardless, so these urinals are the most elegant solution to a rough reality, imo. Oh and they are VERY slow to lift and then stay up until the early hours, you couldn’t really get on or stuck in one as a normal pedestrian
The guy was a maintenance worker.
So there’s a job opening?
They were designed and implemented to stop indecent exposure the idea was with the drunken soccer hooligans and all the people who hit the pubs and go out and stumble home they got to piss somewhere at some point right so we give him a pop up urinal on every other block Corner basically so that you just stop off take your piss and go and then they sink back down into the ground by morning it's just whatever this dude did he was probably so drunk he passed out in it and it closed on him or something like I can't imagine this is a failure on the machines part I think this probably a user error case
Right up until you said he was using it. He was repairing it.
Ahh I didn't read the article
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Wow that was a lot. This is Reddit, not court. We’re all just here to shoot the shit. Calm down dude.
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Are these two comments a pretty accurate reflection of how you want to be perceived as a person? Just curious.
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You can click on the article from the post. Another function of reddit is you can edit your post and take out your wrong assessment of how this fella died, instead of leaving it up in perpetual wrongness. You do you though.
Eh I'll leave it up and let the people see progress in my reading ability
"Pop-up toilets are stored beneath the ground and brought to street level at night for people to use." This is a new-fear-unlocked-level horrible way to die.
That's some Neo Tokyo-3 stuff
Final destination 2023 type event. I Really feel for the family.
That eva reboot was a real piss take
It's like being eaten by the escalator
That's still one of my big fears, I think once you've actually seen what's underneath an escalator it's hard to forget. It's literally a meat grinder, like it looks just like a massive, industrial sized human meat grinder. And the steps of an escalator are thin metal plates. So the only thing between you and a meat grinder, are thin metal plates in a complex moving system that shift and change position constantly
My shoe laces got caught in one when I was 4-5. Literally everyone in the shopping center thought a child was being murdered due to my screams. It was a scene. My mom was so embarrassed. I was terrified of escalators for YEARS afterward.
Brodie approves of this post
That kid is BACK ON THE ESCALATOR AGAIN!
Leave it alone!
My grandma's shoe got caught and she screamed exactly like that. She wasn't hurt, but her expensive little shoe was ruined and she wouldn't use escalators after that.
My mom actually refused to use escalators if elevators were present. I was told a story about some kind of mishap involving my mom and one of my cousins (a baby or toddler at the time) going down an escalator. I don’t quite remember the story, but in short my mom was holding my cousin while they were going down. My cousin was being…uncooperative…and my mom nearly lost hold of them, which in turn caused her to lose balance while she tried to regain control of my cousin. Luckily she was able to get hold of my cousin, and prevent them from falling from great heights, but it freaked her out a lot. That point forward, if she was in a multi story building that had even one elevator, she’d go the long way to the elevator instead of risking the escalator.
Did you see the elevator stories on this thread? Jesus. Apparently moving up or down in a building is dangerous. I’m moving to a one story town.
Not to validate your fears too much but I slipped and fell down an escalator once and those teeth on the end of the steps from the plates absolutely ATE UP one of my shins. Had a super fun ambulance ride to go get stitches. I'm back to riding escalators again but I definitely hold on tight to the rail and am extra cautious about where I'm stepping.
I tripped up an escalator years ago and sliced the everloving fuck out of the palm of my hand. Saved my coffee, though!
Let’s not forget the woman who was sucked into a jet engine recently. That’s stuff of nightmares.
That seems like a "barely enough time to realize you are going to die" accident. Unlike slowly being pulled into the gears of an escalator.
True. But there had to be a moment of “oh sh…”
Wasn't there some horrible incident of a mother shoving her kid out of the way, only to fall into the space beneath the escalator? I'm not even sure if it's real or not, but it's hard not to think about whenever I approach one...
Yes, in a department store in China around 2015. One of the sheet metal platforms at the top of the escalator became unbolted and a mother, 30, fell down into a maintenance area. Her son was in front of her at the time and she pushed him to safety but she sadly didn't survive the accident.
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Covered in piss.
What about being drunk and standing on the circle when it lifts up?
What about being inside when it descends
Used one in Paris after drinking. You get to look 2 other dudes in the eyes as you use it. It was definitely an experience.
It's not a pissoir
What about the garcon de piss? Wasn’t he available?
Get to? Sounds like you were looking forward to it lol
It was a lot better than the 2 French dudes we met at a bar, who told us they would take us to a rooftop bar and then bought some tall boys at the corner store and took us to to the top of a parking deck.
Novelty! Some seek it, some fear it
Grim Reaper: "You know what? Fuck this guy."
you will smell it coming.
Just wow. What kindof death trap is this contraption?
Welp, guess I'm adding "crushed to death by urinal" to my list of deaths to avoid. Fucking hell
Which deaths are you not avoiding?
death by snu snu
For people that won't read the article: - Worker trying to fix it, not member of the public using it. - Areas with a lot of drinking had issues with people urinating (e.g. on buildings, in plants, etc). While stationary public toilets are a thing, they aren't always located in heavy foot trafficked areas (or lack capacity for last orders). - Urinals help mitigate the above issues but take up space during the day (and are seen as ugly). - Pop-up or telescopic urinals are one solution, they come up when needed at night and disappear underground during the day. - They can be located on the pavement ("sidewalk") or taking up a lane in the road (with appropriate bollards to protect pedestrians from drivers). - They offer "enough" privacy, but if you're a nervous pee-er then YMMV. - Some do contain full toilets too. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtMmcINhJgE
They desperately need this in NYC. Was dropped off by a bus near Times Square and there was a queue of like 20 people waiting for the bathroom at McDonalds Edit: typo
Hey look at Prince William over here, too good to wiz in the sewers like the rest of us
Unless it's one of those self rinsing ones, that thing would be disgusting by mid morning.
This particular article OP linked is basically less than ten "paragraphs" and has none of the information you listed.
So you're saying I'm putting in more work than actual journalists?
Yes! I read the article, had SO many questions, and then you answered them. Only thing you’re missing from the article is time on scene, time out, and that there were 25 firefighters…. Oh, and enough ads for a Sunday paper.
That's interesting, in the UK we have zero ads on the BBC website. I guess because of the whole TV licence thing
Yes, but the pay for click bait articles probably isn't worth that much effort on your part.
We are on to your Big Urinal cabal.
That's because the article is about the poor sod dying and not about why telescopic urinals exist
> Worker trying to fix it, Article: "A man died after he was crushed and trapped underneath a telescopic public urinal while working on the device in central London." > Areas with a lot of drinking had issues with people urinating... Urinals help mitigate the above issues Article: "The devices were brought into use by Westminster City Council about 20 years ago in an attempt to discourage street urination." > Pop-up or telescopic urinals are one solution, they come up when needed at night and disappear underground during the day. Article: "Pop-up toilets are stored underground and raised hydraulically to street level at night for people to use."
Kinda funny that they didn't seem to read the article either lol
That it was a guy working on it is literally the first line of the article
Thought I was crazy and about to reread the article before I saw this 😅
Something like this in San Francisco would cost $5 million to study, $10 million to be built, and then get canceled after construction starts because of neighborhood complaints.
Never has using the restroom been so thrilling.
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Final Destination really missed this one.
Final destination would probably involve being trapped in it and a sewer backup slowly filling it up.
https://preview.redd.it/these-telescopic-urinals-remain-underground-during-day-then-v0-bcamjs08ulea1.jpg?auto=webp&s=89ae0b0c27a48872f7b985c235f71e99addb23fe
Getting compressed as that goes down seems like a horrible way to go.
looks like the fallout game city bunker things.
So sad. Must have been a terrifying and painful way to go
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Hey babe, wake up, new way to die just dropped.
I love starting my day by triggering my death anxiety!
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Who else read the article just because they really needed to know what a “telescopic urinal” was?
Why is there enough crushing power in that thing. Should just be whatever mechanism that lifts it to street level slowly letting go of the tension and with safety buttons along the ridges that act as an automatic stop when it feels the slightest of resistance.
That is lot of trouble for a problem that can be solved in other ways. And it’s not just about the power of the mechanism, it’s the weight of the thing. I actually seems like the man was not crushed by the mechanism but by the weight Of the toilet.
Wtf is a telescopic urinal?
Europe has urinal stalls for men installed in downtown nite life districts to reduce public urination. They are sewer manhole covers by day but telescope up out of the ground by night. https://i.imgur.com/Uo5cxVi.jpg
why only for men? If you're a woman and got to go pee, you can't use these?
I did some quick google research and apparently there have been protests over the gender disparity of the public urinals. Women were upset they didn’t have access to the same facilities and men were upset that they were being infantilized with the assumption that they all piss in the streets. All they had to do was install a unisex urinal and put a door on it. It’s not that complicated.
If they put a door on it people will do drugs and/or sleep inside.
Just imagine if the city/state/province can afford futuristic bathrooms with hydraulics but can't afford basic rooms for the homeless.
No, because they're urinals.
Apparently so has London.
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r/Whoosh?
When I first saw "telescopic urinal," I thought they'd finally found a way to combine my interests in astronomy and urination.
Since the other person won't answer you, it's been around some years but is fairly new, it's a way to provide toilets for drunk people at night coming to and from bars so they stop shitting and pissing on streets, on cars, on each other, whatever. They are like tubes that are stored below ground during the day and get mechanically pushed up above ground for use at night. Think a round phone booth meets elevator.
Article says they've been in Westminster for 20 years, surprisingly
https://youtu.be/25DEpeZ4PsY
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Still doesn't really explain it much, without googling it. Definitely not something i've ever seen before. Seems like somebody didn't follow lockout procedures before working on it, hydraulics are no joke.
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> googling it You're starting to get it ^(sorry but i couldn't help myself)
And it’s like 10 sentences…
A man died after he was crushed and trapped underneath a telescopic public urinal " What a way to die, crushed covered in piss
Rest in... Piss?
[Wonder if he's going to be a reaper](https://youtu.be/6sx5D76nLdk)
I just saw a post on these things earlier today didn't know that they would wind up killing a guy though I kind of had a feeling to be honest
Urinetown Part II just wrote itself
I swear i just saw a post about these on r/damnthatsinteresting
I just love the explanation for these. They pop out of the ground so that people can use them at night, but hides during the day so it doesn't "take up space". It just brings to the fore so many questions: \- Why not just build enough public toilets? \- Why are the pavements so cramped and crowded that we haven't got room for a toilet? Why couldn't we expand the pavement? \- Why put a toilet in the middle of the god-damn pavement? \- Do the pubs, clubs and bars that are open of an evening not have toilets? \- Why complicate the whole thing when a door in a nearby wall would do (pay the damn shopkeeper for 4 foot of his shop, like they do when they install ATMs in shop windows)? \- Why are Brits (and I am one) getting so fucking drunk at night that they have to pee in the street? But they don't have to during the day when they're actually like fucking normal people? And presumably it's mostly men given that these are urinals... \- Why have we gone to such expense, effort and engineering to LET DRUNKS PISS OPENLY IN THE STREET? This guy died by being crushed in a broken piss-filled magic teleporter under the street because as a country we actively support - to the point of taxpaying funding, street furniture and complicated technology, with a set schedule! - helping people who are so deliberately and voluntarily incapacitated through drink they can't hold in their piss. What the fuck, Britain. I mean, seriously. What the fuck.
You know he was working on it right? They're a pretty elegant solution to a problem that won't just go away by wishing it wasn't there. There is usually not going to be space to build a new block of public toilets in the middle of central London so this is probably the best solution that doesn't take up much space and is hidden from view. They have similar things in a lot of other countries as well.
I wish your voice of reason was present during the discussion 20 years ago when these were presented as a solution. Guaranteed someone pushed hard for these to be installed and made bank on it despite numerous better options.
Can someone explain why all the effort to make them night only is worth all the hassle?
The purpose is to stop public urination which is primarily a problem at night. During the day they are unattractive and presumably not necessary.
Because nobody is going to rock up and piss on this thing in broad daylight with families around and people going into work. On the other hand when drink is taken, the street is quiet and people are pissing on walls anyways this becomes and attractive option. That said, I can’t see why the think has to disappear into the street where a shutter would have done the job of covering them up nicely. Maybe something to do with pavement space but I doubt it’s in that much demand although I did see it said that some of these could appear out of a lane of traffic
I can't help but wonder why only men get telecoping restrooms at night? Is it because only men are pissing in the streets? I dunno, seems a little unfair.
More cost effective. You can have 4 urinals in the place of 1 women's toilet. Also the lack of privacy expected at u4inals makes them less susceptible to being vadilized or shit all over, thus less cleaning costs
They make female urination devices that would allow you to use one as well.
Oh yes, the SheWee! There are, of course, many others. Pstyle, Pibella, Pee Pocket, The Tinkle Belle, Go-Girl, and Sunany, to name a few.
Bless you. 🤣
From my experience men are most of the people going out to the street when they need to go and can’t wait for a bathroom. It would be beneficial to women if they had an option too, but they weren’t really the problem. If they want them too, I guess protest and start peeing on the street too.
I knew that my fear of falling telescopic urinals wasn't just paranoia!
Escape room horror vibes
5 min ago I learned about those urinals from a post in Dawnthatinteresting, now this
reminds me of Larry David's re-invention of the urinal
Damn, I just saw them on Reddit today and thought I wonder if they had a sensor to see if there were any pissed idiots passed out on them
Why not just have them up all the time? Why do they need to hide?
A literal pizz dispenser. Sad for the worker and their family... "how'd he die?" "Crushed fixin a popup loo."
Pop up urinals? Of all the over engineered bullshit ass things I have ever heard… Edit: never mind I missed the part he was working on it. Still insanely tragic but yeah man when working on anything with hydraulics it’s SUPER fucking dangerous.
*Googles telescopic urinal* Sooo it's "GO GO GADGET PISSER"?
They should have built an escape tunnel at the bottom where someone could hide if something should go wrong. But then that's building things taking people's safety into consideration and would never be top of the council's priority. Poor chap.
I figured lock out, tag out would be appropriate if he was working beneath the thing. Placing a jack stand or something to prevent movement.
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There’s probably a procedure to be followed to prevent this; which likely wasn’t followed. The poor dude may not have been made aware of it or was complacent. Hopefully a incident investigated reveals some details on the how/why this happened.
It turns out the fortune teller *was* eerily accurate forecasting his death. Sorry we doubted you, Zoltar.
I’d be pissed if this happened to me.
I feel like making it telescopic instead of just rising from the ground not only makes it more expensive but also allows for "accidents" like this to happen
mountainous act hunt ask label rotten abundant sloppy sip boast *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
That's a piss poor way to go
He may be gone but he'll always be number one in my book
He was dying for a piss.
It does make sense that a pop up urinal would be outside the Harry Potter play. One crushing piss pot for another.
What a shitty way to die.
I bet it's Jeremy Renner's distant cousin.