(Tidbit) Elevators and older people

TheParser

Diamond Member
Nov 16, 2017
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"No matter how quickly elevators go up, they all come down at about the same speed -- no more than about 10 meters per second -- because the inner ear doesn't adjust to descent as well as ascent."

As a (very) older person, I was fascinated by another reason for the slower speed of descent: "Older people can wet their pants if they come down too fast."



Source: The February 19, 2018, print edition of Bloomberg BusinessWeek. (P.S. Because of all the new tall buildings in Asia, the elevator business is booming. Its revenues in 2016 exceeded $96 billion.)
 
I'm calling bullshit.

There is NO downward pressure in an elevator that is descending. And the rate of descent is irrelevant.

The only part of the journey with downward pressure is when decelerating to a stop.

An acquaintance of mine, skydiving, had a mishap with a chute that did not deploy. He fell 5,000 feet and was not injured in the fall.

But he broke "every bone in his body" when he hit the ground. Survived, thankfully. But it took years to recover.
 

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