This edition's column is about the risk of entrapment between the building fabric and an escalator handrail and follows on from the April 23 column where I looked at the passenger contribution to escalator accidents.

I make no apologies for referencing my old chum Dr Lutfi Al Sharif again and repeating the use of his Venn diagram from his paper entitled “Escalator Human Factors: Passenger behavior, accidents & design” [1]. You will recall that he identified three inputs to escalator passenger accidents.

These were:

• Design

• Maintenance, Inspection & Operation

• Passenger Behaviour

The Venn diagram can be seen below (Fig 1).

I made the point in the last edition that the number of escalator accidents involving personal injury occurring are rising and litigation following accidents is similarly increasing. Sometimes you have to be careful what you ask for and following the last edition I received a number of messages and photographs about passenger contribution to accidents. I thought I would share a couple of height problem photographs with you as they amused me, although the potential outcome could have been far worse.