“I used to clean my shoes with them, but I don't do it anymore”: I learned why the “brushes” on the subway escalators are needed

I want to tell you about a mistake I made throughout my entire life. The mistake is banal, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who abused it. Many residents of large cities with a subway still do this, Ukr.Media reports.

For many years I have often traveled by subway, and each such trip was accompanied by observations of its arrangement and passengers. The subway is not just a transportation system, but a real mechanism filled with small details.

At each station there are escalators – long, rhythmically moving belts that raise and lower streams of people. Each escalator has brushes on the sides with a fairly large pile that allows you to clean shoes. I adopted this stereotype that these same brushes are designed to clean shoes (so that the passenger does not drag dirt into the station) from childhood, when I repeatedly watched people cleaning their shoes while moving on the escalator. So I began to repeat after them, especially in winter, when a lot of sand and reagents accumulated on the soles.

A convenient way, so to speak. But just the other day, my world turned upside down when I learned that these brushes are not intended for cleaning shoes at all. I learned this not from the Internet, but from a friend who worked in the subway for several years.

I was going down the escalator with a former subway employee and cleaning my shoes with these same brushes in front of him. My comrade looked at me, smiled, and said:

– “Are you one of them too?”

I replied:

– “So what? A good opportunity to do something useful along the way and clean your shoes.”

After my answer, he, without being confused, explained to me in detail that I was making a big mistake, and on the contrary, I was scratching and dirtying my shoes even more, and that these brushes were not intended for cleaning shoes, but for the safety of passengers.

“Imagine that there are no brushes on the sides of the escalator. A person enters the subway with untied shoelaces, staring at his phone and hurrying to work, rushes onto the escalator. And then the untied shoelace suddenly gets into the gap between the escalator wall and the moving stairs. What then? What if a woman is in a long dress? These very brushes are used to prevent such accidents, the consequences of which can cause serious injuries to inattentive people. A leg can be twisted, and in some cases even pulled. The escalator controller will be forced to stop the movement of the mechanisms to further eliminate the consequences of the emergency situation. Therefore, the brushes are arranged so that the passenger keeps a safe distance from the wall.”

That's how I learned that these brushes are not for shoes. I don't do it anymore, but I just watch other people continue to do it. And it's very strange why they don't inform you over the loudspeaker during the escalator that these brushes are not for shoes. Perhaps the metro management should record a separate audio track explaining that “the brushes on the sides of the escalator are not for cleaning shoes.” There are a lot of such people, and finding out the truth will open a new world for them.

And keep in mind: shopping malls also have escalators and brushes. They perform exactly the same function as the brushes on the escalators in the subway.

Джерело: Source