Black Box Warning On Risks

GuangZhou Daily 2006.10.26.
Reporter Liu Xiaoxing, photographer Liu Dan

    Elevator passengers in Guangzhou will have an additional safeguard spirit. Specialist from Guangzhou special device supervision and inspection institute told us yesterday that the elevator black box is hope to install in the elevators in Guangzhou to improve their running security factor. This scientific research fruit has got state patent and has been put in use for testing in 5 elevators made by different manufacturers since last year. It has been proved useful and has been ratified by relevant departments.
    This elevator running data recorder, as we name it as Black Box, is an inspector and a warning guard in the same time. It is recording all the time the elevator’s working state data and will inform elevator managers automatically in case of elevator operation failure. It even can detect some hidden malfunctions that are very easy to omit. It will send maintenance warnings before the elevator refuses to work. Once there happens to be a dissension, it will provide proves.
     The statistic shows that there are all together 211 cases of elevator running accident in China last year, which caused 196 dead. The man in charge of Guangzhou special device supervision and inspection institute said that the black box could prevent a lot of security accidents from happening. The specialist told us that this 16K paper sized black box in the control room will surveille the elevator’s running state every 2-3 seconds. Once the passengers are trapped inside the elevator, the black box will automatically send operation failure warning messages to 3 managers’ mobile phones via the GSM/GPRS communication module and mobile communication network, so that the emergency can be solved immediately.
    The specialist also told us that passenger trapping is a common kind of elevator incident. When the passengers are trapped inside, they will fell annoyed and sad. If it happens at midnight and no duty people inside the control room answer the emergency phone call, there is no mobile phone signal inside the elevator, the passengers have to rescue by themselves. They usually choose to push the door aside by force. That is very easy to lead to tragedies. Once there is a 21-year-old girl happened to be inside the elevator when it stopped running. She can’t call emergency by her mobile phone. She decided to push the door aside. Unfortunately she fell down to 10-meter-deep elevator well and lost her life. The video recorder inside the elevator recorded what happened to her in her last 8 minutes. The specialist said that the risks would surely be reduced rapidly with the help of the black box.
    "Our goal is to reduce the elevator operation failure down to 20 percent. The black box is our key to reach this goal" . the man in charge said. He told us that inspectors could only check elevator’s temporal state on their previous routine inspections. They have no way to get the information of what kind of problem and which type of malfunction the elevator has a certain period of time before. Once the black box is installed in the elevator, it will catch every slight or short fault and know the type of malfunction. It will store all the information in memory so that the maintenance technicians will reach a good judgement on its running state and malfunction distribution situation after reading the running data information of a certain period of time. They will inspect purposely and will eliminate malfunctions and hidden risks.
    We are told that this is the first time in China to install black boxes on elevators. Guangzhou special device supervision and inspection institute has called the corresponding departments in Guangzhou to popularize the black box in the city.