First time in my life seeing an escalator incident: someone fell down when reaching the top, and uhhh, the failure mode is both very obvious and not very nice. Took about 6 or 7 falls until someone managed to reach for the emergency stop.
Adding that to my list of transport modes less safe than commercial aviation!
(That was in an airport, too.)
@delroth I don't see the failure mode. I'd imagine them to either fall down the escalator faster than it goes up (and thus for this to work just like falling off stairs) and then maybe be escalated upward in a lying position, or to fall without falling down the escalator and be pushed by the escalator to the upper platform. I assume you observed them falling at roughly the same speed as the escalator's upward speed. Is there a mechanism that would cause that speed to be somehow preferred?
@delroth But what caused them to continue falling after their center of gravity was <50cm off the local floor? Unless they were rolling around their long axis, how would they gain enough energy to topple once more?
@robryk dunno, let me set up some tripwires for more in-the-field observations