Statistical survey of elevator accidents in Greece V. Zarikas a,b,1 , M. Loupis a,b,1 , N. Papanikolaou a,b,⇑ , C. Kyritsi c,2 a Lamia Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering, 35100 Lamia, Greece b Technological Research Center of Central Greece, 35100 Lamia, Greece c Lamia General Hospital, 35100 Lamia, Greece article info Article history: Received 11 May 2011 Received in revised form 19 April 2013 Accepted 2 May 2013 Available online 28 May 2013 Keywords: Elevators Accidents Safety guidelines Data analysis abstract This work presents results from a statistical survey regarding accidents in elevators and escalators in Greece, based on data concerning accidents from the last 12 years. A main objective is to explore and uti- lize frequencies and ‘‘correlations’’ among the involved factors, in order to weight and evaluate crucial mistakes and misguided actions. Results will help preventing similar accidents for the technical staff and the users, as well as designing and teaching a new culture and attitude from the users’ side. Various statistical inferences were derived related to regulations for the installation, service and operation of ele- vators. An important finding is that 65% of the reported accidents involve qualified servicing and instal- lation personnel or employees during their work, mainly associated with simultaneous violation of safety/health and internal electrical installations regulations. Other important outcomes concern associ- ations between number of victims and categories of building types or of severity of accidents as well as between severity of accidents and categories of type of violated regulations or of elevator type. Further- more, associations between severity of injury and categories of type of accident or of victims’ age have been found. Proposals for the organization of the responsible authorities, data collection and prevention of similar serious accidents in the future are included. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction During the last decades elevators and escalators have become a necessary tool for the improvement of life in the urban environ- ment; in private or public buildings, in shopping centres and sky- scrapers, in airports, in rail and metro stations, in tourist places, elevators ease human access and material transportation in a fast and reliable manner. Their importance as transport means has led to significant improvements on the technological state of the art as well as on the available secondary services. On the other hand, there is a lot of discussion concerning the accidents that occur during their installation, periodical service and daily operation. More specifi- cally, as elevators today are very complicated electro-mechanical systems, their installation and service are very demanding proce- dures – involving numerous working groups. Hence there is a need for exact coordination between all these technicians and workers, in order to avoid industrial accidents. Furthermore, even minor malfunctions during operation may become fatal. Not to mention precautionary measures that have to be considered in cases where passengers are underage or they already have health problems (e.g. claustrophobia, cardiopathy, respiratory problems). Greece has the highest number of installed elevators per popu- lation in Europe; in absolute numbers about 450,000 elevators are in operation today, growing by roughly 7000 new installations annually (‘‘TECHNICAL’’ Magazine, 2009). Their security certifica- tions depend mainly on the year of installation, but it has to be noted that about 50% of them are already 20–25 years in operation and so they do not meet high security standards. Similar observa- tions hold to other European countries as well; according to official data (ELA), there are 4.2 million operating elevators in the EU and 50% of them are installed before 1980. This fact, as well as the sig- nificant number of fatal accidents which took place during the last years, led EU to issue EN 81-80 standard (safety rules for the con- struction and installation of lifts) presenting 74 dangerous situa- tions that may emerge in old elevators and the appropriate actions to eliminate them. Most of the EU-Members have already adopted EN 81-80 in their national regulations, thus tightening the relevant installation and service framework (European Direc- tive 89/654/EEC; European Directive 89/391/EEC; European Direc- tive 91/383/EEC). Although Greece is one of the EU-Members that have already harmonized their national regulations and many manufacturers and installation companies have published detailed installation, service and operation manuals (European Directive 95/16/EC; 0925-7535/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2013.05.001 ⇑ Corresponding author at: Lamia Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering, 35100 Lamia, Greece. Tel.: +30 22310 60254. E-mail addresses: vzarikas@teilam.gr (V. Zarikas), npapanikolaou@teilam.gr (N. Papanikolaou), hkyritsi@hosplam.gr (C. Kyritsi). 1 Tel.: +30 22310 60254. 2 Tel.: +30 22310 63945. Safety Science 59 (2013) 93–103 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Safety Science journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ssci