Sadly they are slowly disappearing. Mainly because of safety reasons, they are considered dangerous.
100 years ago, accessibility was not an issue.
I wonder if they couldn't be retrofitted with some safety device, like sensors stopping the motion if some object crosses the door when the elevator is above a certain height, respective to the floor.
Nobody is going to compromise those things any time soon.
* You can jump in too late, thus falling an unexpected height and break your ankles.
* You take too long getting in thus getting a garment/arm/leg stuck between the ceiling of the paternoster and the floor.
Am I correct? Or am I missing something?
The are many reasons for this, but it mostly comes down to people being distracted and simple statistics - given enough time, even a small risk will lead to accidents.
Signs might protect a new user - 'this is a guillotine if you hit the button it will cut your hand off'. Is that the point your making?
We were lucky, it was a very close thing. :\ Convenience vs. acceptable risk, with a certain amount of 'cool and rare' factor. Moving human bodies around is inherently dangerous.
There have been some deaths caused by paternosters. The number (5 between 1970 and 1993) is tiny, but there aren't that many paternosters.
A man died in 2012 when he fell into the shaft.
We probably shouldn't be installing more paternosters unlesss we come up with safer designs. I don't think we should be closing the existing examples.
The overall risk is low but probably higher than that of a conventional lift although paternosters should be far more efficient.
Step out a tad too late while going down and trip on the unexpected step up you have to make, and a few seconds later, the top of the box may break your ankle. The falling _will_ happen, in particular to elderly with weaker bones, so you will have to come up with a solution that stops the device _fast_ if that happens. At the same time, for reliability, the device shouldn't come to a stop if someone heavy steps or jumps into a box.