Saturday, December 22, 2007

Poor design in a potentially dangerous situation

I was travelling back from Paris this week when just as the Eurostar train pulled out of Paris we were hit by a power failure affecting the whole area. All the trains in and out of Gare Du Nord were stranded for over 2 hours whilst we waited for the problem to be fixed.

The Eurostar staff were very helpful and friendly, but one comment really struck me as bizarre and unhelpful - but also quite funny.

The train had emergency power, presumably some sort of battery and the announcer said: "In the event that we are stuck here for a long time, it is possible the battery power will run out and the train will be in complete darkness. In this case none of the doors between carriages will operate (you pull a lever and they open automatically), but you can open them manually by pushing the black button above each door"

So that must have been a bad day in the carriage design team - "If we lose power and the train is in darkness, lets allow people to open doors by looking for a small black button black button above their heads - tee hee"

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