 Poster: A snowHead
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The German ski resort of Winterberg is building a chairlift with what's claimed to be the world's first 'automatic child security lock'.
This involves dispensing with the footrest and adding a second safety bar in front of the passengers, below the normal safety bar, to help prevent children from sliding under. Additionally, the safety bar(s) are lowered automatically at the bottom station and raised automatically at the top station. The lift concerned is only a 2-minute ride, so the lack of a footrest is not thought to be a significant disadvantage.
This report and diagram from Ropeways.net
The catchment of Winterberg includes Frankfurt, the Ruhr Valley and Holland. It's expected that the new lift will draw international attention because of concerns over child safety on chairlifts.
Any comments?
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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I hate chairlifts without footrests.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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So do I. I'm wondering if two things are being confusingly linked here. There's a sentence in the report ...
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| As both adults and children use the same chair, the footrest has to be dispensed with. |
... that doesn't seem to make sense. I can't see that adding a supplementary bar necessitates the elimination of the footrest, if that's what they're saying.
Can anyone explain this, re. the diagram shown?
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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David Goldsmith, I'm still wondering about it, the safety bar is normally at that height so that adults can get their thighs under it, if there's a second bar under the first I think it might be a bit tight for many larger adults
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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How many accidents a year are there involving children? We know of Bev Bish's, but are there so many that the design of the chairlift needs to be changed. If so shouldn't all chairlifts be changed as a matter or urgency. But on the other hand, am I right in thinking that in the USA chairlifts have no safety bar at all?
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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Chairlift design is constantly upgraded to improve safety. Some of the biggest changes have been to the clamps on detachable chairs, which are much more substantial these days to avoid the things failing so that chairs slip down the line - which was a problem.
The latest detachables, where you get on and off at 90 degrees to the line of uplift, give people maximum time to get comfortably seated. So they are really safe at the bottom and top stations.
Full-scale replacement of chairs (which would be like a recall of a car model) would only happen if a national safety authority ordered it. It's not negligent to operate a machine that's passed for safety, and any innovation like this has to go through a long period of trial in public use before it's necessarily proven safer than other chairlifts.
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In my limited experience of skiing in North America (Whistler, Breck, Keystone & Vail), they've all had safety bars. Some haven't had footrests, but they've generally been the older ones, so not really different to europe. certainly, more people seem to be "macho" about not putting the bar down, but if they don't want a nice rest... (or they've got very light skis).
More importantly, why are so many chairlift designers short. I'm not that tall at 6' 2", but so many of them don't want to put the footrest low enough to give me room to actually rest my feet!
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supernaut, thats because the Dopplemayr factory is actually run by oompah loompahs working for the mysterious owner...
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