​Almost an accident a day on Singapore’s escalators, and the reasons why

Channel NewsAsia online (first reported on Talking Point, Channel 5, 13 Jun, 9.30pm)

Most accidents on escalators were caused by “user behaviour”, such as using prams on escalators, running on them and not holding the handrails. Asst Prof Christopher Cummings of NTU’s Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, an expert in understanding user behaviour and risk communications, felt that part of the problem is that escalators are such a common technology that people take them for granted. By the time a child is five, he would have ridden escalators “hundreds of times”. “So there's no thought process about (the risks). This is one of the few machines that are considered heavy machinery that we let children use all the time,” he said. He also thought the warning stickers on escalators were small or contained too much information for people to bother reading.