Man dies after his jacket gets caught in escalator at Mito train station

Horrific! How could that possibly happen???

I guess it had power enough to pull the jacket to strangle him but not enough force to make the machine stop and no one around at that moment to press the stop button.

This is a nightmare that happen to anyone any day. How can you save yourself from the unexpected?

Good lesson for everyone.

So.... 9 p.m. and no one noticed or did anything to help the poor old guy? And what were station staff doing until they realized what was going on?

Redemption - Horrific! How could that possibly happen???

Poorly maintained or faulty escalator. The design of the belt is to stop fingers or clothing getting caught.

How did this happen? Also, how come nobody pushed the emergency stop button? 9pm in Japan at a train station is usually still milling with people, no?

It happened at Mito Railway Station.

Getting on an escalator anywhere is a risk not only Japan. A friend of mine who was traveling in Canada, her young daughter had a toe cut when on an escalator I cannot recall on how it happened I just remembered it happened.

Condolences to this elderly gentleman's family.

Heart attack?

Poor fella

Sincere condolences

It appears whatever they did to him at the hospital was worse than the escalator

A traumatic way to go

Sad. The Old guy should have just slipped out of his jacket and let it go.... But we/I don't know all the facts...

@Lindsay IF the escalator was poorly designed then we would be reading about many incidents with escalators in and around Japan. One incident does not make the escalator a faulty escalator, or a poorly maintained one. What are you basing your SWAG finding on?

Redemption - Horrific! How could that possibly happen???

Poorly maintained or faulty escalator. The design of the belt is to stop fingers or clothing getting caught.

Poorly maintained or faulty escalator. The design of the belt is to stop fingers or clothing getting caught.

Do you know the escalator design or maintenance procedures to make that kind of judgment??..

For such an isolated event, it is more correct to assume that it was an improper and risky use of that escalator..

Less feelings and more facts..

Its hard to tell what happened based on the facts in the article. Its also possible that getting his jacket caught simply caused him to lose his balance, fall down and strike his head. Given that he was conscious when found, something along those lines seems more plausible than him getting strangled by his coat.

I once had my jacket get stuck by the draw string getting caught in the rubber railing, Maybe that’s what happened.

It doesn’t mention what type of jacket he was wearing.

No idea how?

I saved a tumbling person by running to the emergency button located at the bottom of the stairs. I pushed it and the stairs stopped. Emergency shut off buttons may be on all stairs but the public doesn't know about them. How can the public be made more aware?

Getting on an escalator anywhere is a risk not only Japan. A friend of mine who was traveling in Canada, her young daughter had a toe cut when on an escalator I cannot recall on how it happened I just remembered it happened.

Well said..

No matter if it's well maintained or in good operations..

Using an escalator could be a risk always and in all countries..

Not only Japan..

For such an isolated event, it is more correct to assume that it was an improper and risky use of that escalator..

Less feelings and more facts..

We know neither, but I doubt that an old man was using the escalator "improperly".

Mechanical devices designed for mass use by the ordinary public tend to have a wide range of safety features built in to protect against the most common and likely things to go wrong, such as clothing getting trapped in the mechanism, or children's fingers poked in the belt. If we didn't, this kind of incident would occur daily allowance around the millions of escalators around the world.

The rareness of the event and the relative ordinariness of the cause suggests that this was a safety feature failure.

This is a very tragic and unfortunate event. I don't know enough to comment regarding use or maintenance. I have briefly worked for an escalator company and know that there are a lot of variables for the stop button location and emergency stop function. Standardising all generations would improve safety, at least so education can be consistent, eg where tge stop button is located, top, bottom, or both.

One other improvement is not to have reversible direction, so that users aren't unfamiliar with its use.

he must have frustrated and got heart attack. It sound like poor guy couldn’t remove his jacket and let it go, or didn’t want to let it go.

Oh my, what an awful way to go.

1) I wonder how many people just walked past him before someone finally helped.

2) Despite the unfortunate accident, the real issue and a bigger problem is the poor ambulance services and hospitals refusing to accept ambulances with challenging situations.

How long did it take for them to reach the hospital?

What else would have been done in an ambulance in another country that could have probably stabilized the patient before arriving at the hospital that was not done in the Japanese ambulance?

Why do they not allow research to be done on the survival rate of patients enroute to the hospitals and factors that contribute to them?

NotThe OneToday  04:05 pm JST

1) I wonder how many people just walked past him before someone finally helped.

No need to wonder. The seciity camera footage is being reviewed. Maybe lots of people, maybe nobody.

OssanAmerica

"1) I wonder how many people just walked past him before someone finally helped."

No need to wonder. The seciity camera footage is being reviewed. Maybe lots of people, maybe nobody.

Until the footage is examined, and even more importantly, the findings released to the public, there is a very real need to wonder.