This one was just horrific. And 'news' went out with '....mother saved/pushed the kid to safety.......'.

Blame is on maintenance crew, because they were fixing the escalator, and didn't secure the door/opening on the floor, after they finished.

West has much more rigorous control on all 'public maintenance' than China. 5000 people use escalator per day, but repair was just some regular 'change the door knobs' repair. Similar thing is with (school) buses.

Yeah you never know with these types of cluster stories. 

Once it happens once and it becomes clear that escalator accident stories have some legs then they start searching for other ones, any story involving an escalator they can throw up there.

Plus...then they can do a piece on the new trend itself and get even more stories.

"Escalators failing left and right! Who is to blame?" 

Man on the street: "The corrupt officials are taking bribes from the escalator repair budget!"

Corrupt official: "Foreign escalator companies are taking advantage of the good simple escalator loving people of China!"

And so forth.

That said of course there is a huge problem here with people not taking care of anything. Everything here ages in dog years cause they dont bother to stay on top of it.

My Dad was a Government work place and safety Inspector in Queensland and he has told me about some of the Escalator and travelator accidents he attended

and there was a few a year

however most involved kids loosing toes due to no shoes

or people doing really dumb things like that guy in Shanghai did with the trolly last year

I have noticed that since that horrible accident all the major supermarkets, malls etc where I live now have a store/worker standing at the top of the escalator.

Just a few days ago there was an elderly man with a shopping cart going up on the escalator and the front wheel got caught on the side so he was stuck, one of the supermarket workers was able to press the stop button and help him, I think I will start taking the stairs from now on!!

There was a similar spate of reports a few years back about lifts.

Anyway, this escalator thing was not an accident. It was manslaughter plain and simple. If the repair guys were too dumb not to realise the danger, then the buck has to stop at the managers who employed them.

I hate shopping malls. I never feel safe in them. I am always looking out for fire exits (often not many to be found), and yes, I am pedantic enough that I even look for the E-stop on escalators. They are there, but they are hidden. They have to hide them from the stupid c***ts who would not be able to resist pushing it if they saw it . And lets face it, if the e-stops were in plain view where they should be, there would be weekly reports of mass crush deaths.

This is a typical example of the country's inability to address even the stupidist of problems. How difficult is it to have a public awareness campaign to not push e-stop buttons?  Then the buttons could be in plain view and stupid deaths such as this could be prevented.

Some Chinese person posted a photo on Weibo of an escalator in Japan with the cover removed, and it's impossible to fall inside, even with the cover fully removed. Obviously this person then got attacked by wumaos. TBH I've no idea whether escalators in the west are designed the same. But we at least know there's an emergency off switch at both ends. 

Never heard of death by escalator before... I was in a shopping mall this evening. One escalator wasn't working. People were pocking it with their feet before going...

The death of the mother who got eaten up by the escalator was caused by 2 things according to the Chinese report.

1. The maintenance crew did used the incorrect screws for the metal cover.
2. The safety authority responsible for elevators in the mall gave it a clear pass despite the fact that an investigation after the death revealed that some parts of the escalator fell well short of the industry standards. The manufacturer has gone under complete investigation though some hongbao will surely sort it out.
3. (Extra ) mall staff here standing at the top of the escalator where it happened But had zero training in such emergencies. If they had training, they could have tried to reach for the emergency stop button.

So in the end, the poor son who got pushed away by his loving mother to save his life must live with the image of his mother swallowed up by a machine for the eat of his life.

Corruption, negligence and lack of basic health and safety.

I don't understand why they weren't at the bottom keeping people from getting on . Where was the gate ? It looked like the women were eagerly waited for something to happen . Like those foot massages that are so painful the person getting it makes them cry . The ladies always laugh at people's pain. There are a lot of sickos in China .