ELEVATOR facts

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The thing to know about modern elevators is that they have a lot of safety features.

There’s not a single cable that holds up the car, there are about eight, each of which is capable of holding up a fully loaded car all by itself.

The elevator car and counterweight it’s attached to are usually on tracks in order to provide friction in the event of a catastrophic failure.

The elevator car has safeties on it that activate if there’s what the manual would euphemistically call an “overspeed event”, or in other words, when the car is moving way faster than it should.

The pulley at the top of the elevator shaft is the thing that actually makes the elevator car and counterweight go up and down, and it has a governor on it that locks the pulley into place if there’s too much centrifugal force from an overspeed event.

At the bottom of the elevator shaft there’s usually some cushioning, not enough to always prevent injuries or deaths, but enough to a