I'd believe it. Happens in any marathon-type sporting event. Some people think they can handle it, then find out they shoulda stayed home.

A guy from my school and his dad was inside one that fell a few years ago. I didn't know who he was but I remember my mother being all upset about it. As someone who has an extreme fear of heights and falling, I don't think that would be a nice way to die but there's thing called time, if it only takes a few seconds it beats the hell out of slow moving mortality or old age diseases.

Maybe some elevators have an override feature?

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/17/elevator-hack

And OT, WTF is CIOMALAU still doing here!?

What do you have to do to get booted from this place, post a video of yourself raping babies and then putting them on spikes!?

I thought this is the madhouse.

I don't know, I was just playing Darksiders last night, and I pulled open some elevator doors and WHOOSH, the thing went flying down right past me, while on fire, and crashed way down below somewhere. So if you're in a city that experienced some massive rapture-type apocalpyse thingie a ways back, well then i guess they do fall. ;)

So, we've all been warned....

Seriously though, the elevators in my office building always seem on the verge of falling. They're ancient, and do make scary scraping noises at times and have weird bumps and jostles at times while you're riding. The effect of that seems to be more that people get stuck in them regularly (thankfully hasnt happened to me...), but none have fallen though as far as I know.

Yeah well, given that and the DS experience last night, I did take the stairs this morning ;P

You don't know drastic. :P Keep that avatar and you will learn.

You watch your words when you're addressing my friend, thank you very much.

Let me know if he gives you more lip, or finger, or whatever.

I'm not an engineer. However, from what I've read seen and experienced, almost EVERYTHING that is made has a tolerance level higher than it's working load. You'll see this a lot, where the 'working load' of rope/cord is 1/4th the level it would snap at. Pressure tanks that are rated for 1000 PSI will actually hold 2000PSI or higher before they rupture, electrical components are the same, twice or higher.

Part of this is probably that as components age they get weaker over time. It takes a lot of use and abuse for these things to become weak or need replacement. Like anything else with them, they usually also have backup redundancies in place in case of a failure. As such the most likely thing to break in an elevator currently, is either the motor that moves it up/down, or the circuit board that manages the logic and electrical signals. Those however failing won't have anyone fall to their death :P

It's much harder to get rid of your momentum. Jumping up will only negate a small part of it once you have fallen 5+ meters or so.

That's why they should make elevator out of cushion material.

My sister used to work for an elevator company and she once told me that there are definitely some horrific accidents that happen.

Did I ever tell you all about the time I was on an escalator and it broke down?

I was stuck on that damn thing for three hours!

You can listen to this nice podcast or read this nice article. They provide you with the answers you are looking for.

Isn't that the point of Galileu Galilei's famous experiment (that never happened)? To prove that the acceleration of gravity is a constant, and independent of the mass of the object?
If we and the elevator begin at rest, and then move downwards at the same acceleration, we both reach the bottom at the same exact time. Air resistance is not really an issue in here.

Did you try to get your donkeys in it again? Did you wanted to show them again the city? I thought they banned you from this building? ;)

Seriously, that's bad, nothing you can do, just wait , wait and wait till maybe, hopefully they will repair the damned thing.

But three hours doesn't sound too bad, If you see how long you have to wait for a plumber of cable guy? ;)

Actually what I don't understand, most older (not the really old ones though) elevators had an emergency exit, but not longer the newer ones, I wonder why they removed this feature? Same goes for the fact, that on most older ones, which did not have an exit via the roof, you were normally able to open the doors.