There should be a button outside elevators which one can press in an emergency. You press the button and a number indicating how many people are in your party (in case, say, it's a mom and her kids).This button immediately opens the elevator door or, if the elevator is not on that floor, immediately summons the elevator to that floor. If the elevator is summoned thusly, it proceeds at a faster than normal speed and ignores all other requests to get to the emergency source ASAP. The door THEN immediately opens. While this is all going on, emergency services are being automatically summoned, as well.

Using a camera to scan the immediate area, and assuming there is nobody else within, say, 10 ft, the door then also shuts at a faster than usual speed as soon as your party is across the threshold. If someone else (probably your pursuer) is within 10 ft, it slams shut even faster. If your pursuer manages to get a hand in the door before it closes all the way, it continues to close at a slower rate until the padded doors meet a preconfigured level of resistance, and THEN they lock in place so the pursuer cannot follow you inside.

Hopefully this gets you by until law enforcement arrives to save the day. Hopefully law enforcement isn't on the take. Hopefully, you never find yourself hiding in an elevator from a psycho.
-- 21 Quest, Apr 05 2014

This might exceed your design parameters... http://www.youtube....watch?v=6fXeZ7vob9c
[normzone, Apr 07 2014]

It's not often I'm in one o'them modern buildings with more'n three floors and fancy elevator cars and electric lights, but isn't there always a sign somewhere about _not_ using the elevator in an emergency?
-- Alterother, Apr 05 2014


Shit, I deleted an anno by mistake. Sorry.

What it said (if my memory serves) was: "// it proceeds at a faster than normal speed and ignores all other requests to get to the emergency source ASAP//

Delivering an elevator full of people to the emergency area."

My response was going to be that these other people could serve as distractions or deterrent to your pursuers. Alternatively, it could dump them unceremoniously on their rumps at the floor they are nearest when the elevator is summoned.

And this isn't meant to be used in a fire or flood, not that sort of emergency.
-- 21 Quest, Apr 05 2014


Ah, thank you for clarifying things for the bumpkin. Still, an elevator seems like a bad place to hide from a marauding psychopath. It has no viable escape routes and no immediately available weapons. In the movies the heroes usually escape through the top hatch, which may or may not exist and if they do it's latched from the outside.

This last statement is based on personal observation--back in my fab shop days, I spent an afternoon dangling from an abseil harness because the morons at the build site couldn't figure out how to install a part we'd fabricated (which happened about once a month) and I was the first volunteer with all of the relevant safety training for work in elevator shafts--and supported by an episode of Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe in which the host commented on the lack of a maintenance hatch atop the elevator car in the shaft he was helping to clean.
-- Alterother, Apr 06 2014


// Delivering an elevator full of people to the emergency area//

Yes, but *those* people are played by much less expensive actors - probably extras, in fact.
-- pertinax, Apr 07 2014


This idea has the potential to maim large numbers of innocent elevator users.
-- the porpoise, Apr 07 2014



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