Norwegian nutter skis 300ft down Tube escalator YouTube footage of a "nutter skiing down Angel Tube Station escalator" has not impressed London Underground officials, The Sun reports. LU officials described the stunt - featuring Norwegian Peter Olenick on a 300-ft white-knuckle descent of Europe's longest escalator - as "a dangerous, stupid and irresponsible act that could …
You can see why LU has had a sense of humour failure over this ... they've been caught asleep at the wheel. Again.
The video clearly shows one of their employees only a few metres away to the left of the barriers, who is oblivious of someone stopping at the top of the escalators holding a pair of skis, who is there long enough to check for the all-clear from his mates and clip himself into the skis before commencing the stunt.
Just goes to show that relying on CCTV for security means you are only able to helplessly watch on a monitor as events unfold. The kind of stuff you really want to prevent happening in the first place is usually over long before you can despatch someone from the control room.
LU officials described the stunt as "a dangerous, stupid and irresponsible act that could have resulted in serious injury or death to not only the individual concerned but also other passengers".
And I'd describe LU officials as a humourless collection of nonentities who:
a) Haven't noticed that there were no H&S officials on the video evaluating the safety of the stunt at the time it happened, thereby invalidating their after-the-fact moaning;
b) Failed to notice the complete lack of "passengers" on the escalator in question;
c) Have overstated the case somewhat - serious injury or death?? - probably in a non-too-subtle attempt to make sure no-one does this any more - which they probably will, given the general lack of LU officials featured on this video.
Personally I'd like to applaud this fella for bringing a little amusement into my otherwise dull and tedious existence. Well done that man!
Oh, and has anyone else noticed the BBC's over-egging the figures - 100,000 hits!? When I last looked this video had had 1,406 hits. Including mine.
It's all the Underground's fault. They shouldn't make something so tempting. If they had built ten 30 foot escalators this never would have happened. It's call an "attractive nusiance" in the States and is actionable in court, although it is kind of hard to win, it's expensive to defend.
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