Total Safety Approach on Elevator Doors

Throughout time, elevator passengers have been protected between automatic sliding doors with mechanical safety edges, photo eyes, light curtains and other means of sensors. Common to all solutions is that they are incapable of protecting persons from the leading edges of the doors. The results of suddenly closing doors range from frightened to falling and severely injured people. In addition, the awareness of accidents caused by entrapment of fingers and hands during opening, especially pronounced with glass doors, is on the rise. If European Safety Standards for Machines would be applied to elevator doors, by law all elevators would have to be shut down immediately as they do not comply with the regulations in force! The proposed paper describes risk assessment for elevator doors according to the EU Machine Directive and outlines a new concept of door sensors that elevates safety into a higher realm.