Part three of my series on making the first Law of Robotics enforceable in our modern times.
Cancel this (elevator shoving)
Dragnet: Mrs Aiken's Report
Give me a few minutes to explain and I believe you may see where I am coming from.
My moniker of Tomtech is a name I cherish. I was given it 15 years before joining Daily Kos when I worked the opening of a semiconductor manufacturing facility. The company I worked for was the control systems integration contractor. The company installed all the instruments, equipment, and controls needed for the operation of the facility. Even though I signed on as an electronics technician responsible for wiring and verifying the operation of that equipment, I was promoted to team lead with less than two weeks on the job and became responsible for proving to the owners that everything worked the way it was required. Since I was the most visible contact between the tech team and everyone else they took to calling me Tomtech.
In essence I was the lead technician for the technical systems contractor at the opening of one of the most advanced factories in the country. That was a position to take pride in and the name Tomtech followed me for the rest of my career in that field.
I went there to give the readers some background with which to judge the rest of this tale. I am an expert in one area. Machine Controls and Safety of new equipment installations with an emphasis on robotics as they exist today. I know what documents are out there related to the installation and operation of elevators.
If you look back at my diaries you will see that I have taken care of a severely disabled individual for the past five years. What doesn’t show is that I used my skills to develop a unique communications system and “smart” home for him and also installed a camera system to record his activities and to allow him, and his caregivers, the ability to see what is happening outside of the house. That system was completed four months before my mother’s injury and gave us plenty of video of her activities before the injury plus hours of video covering her recovery.
Chris, my charge, has also been videotaped many times by his mother and grandmother over the years including some tapes where my mother and I make appearances. I have digitized the entire collection and made it available to him. Chris loves to watch those videos and everyone who knows him is surprised that he can work his computer well enough to control his television and find those videos. Chris is a modern Truman who is not only aware that the show is being produced but loves to watch the old episodes while watching the current episodes as they are being recorded.
Two months after Chris came into our home, we were at a concert at a casino hotel when, while heading back to our room, the elevator began to close with me still trying to get him and his wheelchair into a fairly full elevator loaded with others who had also finished watching the concert. I forced the elevator open and someone held the door button while we got situated. At that time I told myself that elevators should not be allowed to close their doors with people in the way but, knowing a little about the law, I knew there was nothing I could do about it.
As a lifelong fan of sci-fi novels, I knew the elevators were violating the First Law of Robotics but I also knew those laws were fictitious and a few seconds of delay with no damage to anyone or anything would prevent me from going further towards trying to prevent that operating mode from harming others.
That changed two years later.
My mother, at 77 and following a hip replacement of the opposite hip 18 months prior, was injured at a brand new hotel and convention center where she was being honored for maintaining her weight at goal for ten continuous years. The convention she was attending was actually called State Recognition Days where almost every attendee was being honored for their various accomplishments as members of a worldwide weight loss club you have likely not heard of since they are not dedicated to selling any line of product.
On the night of the incident I was called as her emergency contact with only the fact that she was in the hospital. Before calling my son, who lived fairly close to the hospital, and my sister, I had Chris’ caregiver prep him for a two day outing. Once Chris was ready we left out for the 200 mile drive to the hospital.
It was a horrendous four hour drive through heavy thunderstorms most of the way. At the hospital, I thanked my son for being there and told him he could return home.
After a sleepless night, for me anyway since Chris slept a few hours in the family chair beside my mother who was being kept asleep with pain medications, I talked to the Orthopedist before waiting in an empty family waiting area that Saturday morning. Chris let me sheep while the surgery was underway which is very unusual for him.
After the surgeon reported a successful surgery Chris and I headed home.
Shortly after we arrived at home my sister called to inform me that she could not get a comped seat as the mother of an airline employee since the flight was full. She was stuck where she had a layover. I paid for her flight online before getting some needed sleep.
My daughter picked her up from the airport, and without activating UBER, took my sister to the hospital.
It is hard to believe but from the time of the injury and through a hospital stay plus an in-patient rehab stint my mother never moved more than a quarter of a mile in total. The hospital, rehab, and hotel were adjacent to one another along a freeway frontage road.
I still wonder if the ambulance went the quarter mile going the wrong way down that frontage road instead of taking the four miles needed to circle through the next exit.
With my sister looking out for her care, their discussions about how she was injured led to one cause. The elevator door shoved an old lady who couldn’t move quickly enough to get out of its way.
After some research on mine and my sister’s part, we had a suspect. Elevator “nudging” mode.
The term “nudging” is an industry term which is not an accurate portrayal of the force required to counter the door’s closing and cause it to open again. You can see how much force the “nudging” mode uses by placing your hand on a bathroom scale and pressing until it reads 35 pounds. A 35 pound push is not a nudge.
As part of a trip to my mother’s orthopedist, I made an appointment to observe the elevator in operation. During that examination, I recorded the elevator using “nudging” mode in the presence of the hotel operations manager and an insurance company expert on elevators. The Operations Manager’s only response was “that’s how elevators operate”.
I have no reason to believe that he was lying. He may not have known all the facts.
Following that I was able to determine that no regulation required the elevators at that location to operate that way, that there was a movement to try and prevent elevators from operating that way, and that the elevator industry believed that they were immune from liability due to that mode of operation.
After that I began research on similar injuries and court cases filed to hold the owners and builders responsible and found why elevator companies didn’t believe anything needed to change.
The elevator manufacturer actually claimed that it is not responsible for shoving an old woman to the ground since the need for their elevators to continuously operate is enough to shield them from liability.
In every case I found the plaintiff tried to show that something was wrong with the particular elevator which injured them but they could not prove anything meeting the requirements for a malfunctioning product case and the filings never suggested a better way.
The elevator manufacturer always won by claiming that “no one found anything wrong with the elevator” or “we didn’t know there was a problem.
That is true. The problem is that the elevators work exactly as designed but the design causes the elevator doors to close without any regard for the reason the elevator door is blocked.
When a company purposely designs a machine to operate with no regard for the safety of persons who may be in the way I believe it is legally the same as a person pushing someone out of their way.
The companies should be liable for any losses suffered by the person pushed. The act performed by the elevator meets my State’s definition of simple assault. The persons responsible for creating that situation should have known better.
Federal data (NEISS) estimates that, on average, more than 12,000 persons each year visit emergency rooms claiming that an elevator was involved in their injury. Additional data from the same source indicates that approximately 2000 of those people need additional care above what an emergency room provides. Industry estimates are that 40% of those emergency room visits are related to elevator doors while a smaller percentage of the persons needing additional care were injured due to the doors. Misaligned stopping points and erratic operation tends to lead to more serious injuries than unexpected door closures but that should not allow for dismissing the people who are seriously injured due to unexpected door closures.
When looking at elevators only it is apparent that the unexpected closing of elevator doors cause injuries on a daily basis but compared to the numbers of persons using elevators the numbers represent but a small percentage.
When you look at “nudging” mode specifically you see that it rarely activates and when it does it is usually irrelevant since the person in the doorway moves out of the way and allows the elevator to operate normally,
There is also an issue where people want the door to remain open for various reasons. Most of the time this causes only a short delay. Pushing the Door Open button or the landing area call button outside the elevator will keep the door open. You can also keep the door open by repeatedly overcoming the force being used to close it.
With that in mind you see that most people are agile, knowledgeable, or strong enough to prevent an elevator door from closing when they want to keep it open.
That is not true for children, the elderly, or handicapped persons who lack the means of keeping a door open when that is their wish or need.
In my mother’s case, she was entering the elevator and a few seconds more would have made the difference between a memory she cherished for being recognized by her peers for the greatest personal achievement of her lifetime (she dealt with weight issues for 50 years prior to getting her weight under control) and a nightmare where she was shoved by a machine which caused her femur to shatter and led to major surgery, months of rehabilitation, and a heightened fear of falling for the rest of her life.
The question comes down to one which should be important to everyone. Can a business operate a machine such that, in order to operate at greater efficiency, it knowingly violates the right we all have to be free from being threatened with unwanted objectionable physical contact?
This case of my mother’s injury is the perfect opportunity to establish a legal precedence which recognizes that the product liability laws as they exist today makes businesses liable when they operate machinery in direct violation of the First Law of Robotics and, if the business is aware of the unnecessarily unsafe condition created by that method of operation, they face punitive damages for that violation.
If you wish to help use Daiykos’ private message system to send me a message.
Thanks for reading my series so far.
Dr. Hitoshi Nikaidoh, 35, a surgical resident, died (in 2003) after he got on the elevator and the doors suddenly closed, pinning his shoulders. His head was severed when the elevator began to rise.
Get me the right data concerning the miswiring of the elevator which decapitated Dr. Nikaidoh and I can prove that he would not have been injured if the elevator had not used “nudging” mode.