this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2026
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I've always used escalators as a great example of this. If they lose power or break they elegantly degrade back into stairs.
"Sorry for the convenience" -- Mitch Hedberg
escalators are actually a bad example of this. What you describe is what is supposed to happen, and they're supposed to be built with mechanisms to ensure that's what happens, but there's been examples of escalators failing in such a way that the weight of too many people on it makes it go faster and faster and people get crushed and deadified.
I watched a youtube video about a famous example a while back, don't remember the channel that did it though or I'd find and link it.
edit: I've been proven wrong but I'm leaving my comment because it's a learning experience for anyone who reads this thread.
Escalators have many security features and they are one of the safest modes of transportation.
Out of the tens of thousands of installed systems, there are bound to be failures of the mechanical safeties (or human-performed installation/maintenence) that can lead to a Swiss cheese path to failure. I wouldn't necessarily dismiss the whole category as a bad example because of that however.
Is it perfectly fail-safe? Well, in those cases, it wasn't. But what were the contributing factors?
I think that specific example was shown to be sabotaged at the behest of management to try to save on maintenance costs so no that doesn’t count
https://youtu.be/tZ8ehplVFp4
yup, that's the one
Well in that case it WAS built with multiple safety mechanisms and failsafes, and it was deliberate human actions that caused the catastrophy.
So escalators are a good example, human greed is the bad example.
At least someone with some sense can observe the amount of people on an elevator and nope out of that collective act of stupidity. I say that qualifies as graceful degradation.
I thought that as well, then the weight of us going up caused it to go down.