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Comment by ggreer | Hacker News Reader

Can you provide more info about people being terrified of automatic elevators? I searched around and everything I found seems to cite one NPR article from 2015.[1] The interviewee's book is out of print and costs $100[2], so that's where that trail stops. If public sentiment against automatic elevators was as strong as described, it seems like there would be more historical evidence available. It's easier for me to find articles disparaging self-checkout systems than for automated elevators. I realize the change in elevators happened long ago, making articles harder to find, but you'd think at least one of them would have gotten digitized and indexed.

1. https://www.npr.org/2015/07/31/427990392/remembering-when-dr...

2. https://www.amazon.com/Ascending-Rooms-Express-Elevators-Pas...

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I just spent some time digging, but finding original sources from the ~1950s is really hard without a NYTimes subscription.

These sorts of things look like promising primary sources, but I can't access the full text. https://www.nytimes.com/1949/01/12/archives/city-gets-elevat... https://www.nytimes.com/1949/02/03/archives/tenants-want-a-d... https://www.nytimes.com/1928/11/11/archives/elevator-law-cha...

I have a subscription. The first two seem to be more about tenants feeling that an operator raises the quality of life. The third one talks of several deaths of children. Apparently in these cases there was a gap of 8 to ten inches between the car doors and the landing doors which accidentally trapped the children and then the car was requested from someone on another level. An ordinance had been proposed to require operators, but opposition claims that rules requiring doors to be flush will prevent such cases.

So this would likely be in the category of cases that would probably never happen with a manual operator. Two solutions were proposed: keep manual operators, or improve the safety of the automatic system.

> Two solutions were proposed: keep manual operators, or improve the safety of the automatic system.

After Southall [1] the drivers union felt the correct approach was to double man trains. It is surely not a coincidence this would also have meant more members and thus more power and income for the union.

That accident would have been prevented by ATP (fitted to the train but disabled because the driver had not been trained) or AWS (fitted to all British trains but disabled by the driver due to a fault).

The ATP system would have braked to a halt to avoid entering an occupied track section. AWS would have audibly alerted the driver to the signals (showing a Preliminary Caution, an ordinary Caution and then Danger) and if the driver did not react, braked to a halt. With neither it appears the driver simply did not see the signals because they weren't looking and so did not react until far too late.

The correct fix of course is to require trains to have working AWS/ ATP and use it. Operating trains with more humans is a worthwhile work around to get a faulty train back to a repair yard as empty stock, but makes no sense in passenger service.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southall_rail_crash

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