Hong Kong’s lift and escalator safety record failing fatigue test

There is no such thing as a piece of machinery that is too old, as long as we observe the fatigue life of each and every moving part that is subjected to repeated cycles of loading and unloading, to have it replaced before the end of its fatigue life.

More frequent inspection is not of much help because by the time the signs of fatigue failure are noticeable to the naked eye, the failure is so imminent as to fall between inspections.

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Their failures could have been pre-empted if they were replaced before the end of their fatigue lives. 

A computer can be trusted to do the alerting without difficulty. Otherwise, no matter how frequent the inspections were, even if weekly, the failure would have occurred between inspections, because fatigue failure is usually so imminent as to be within a few days of fatigue life expiry.