Ever wondered what the internal mechanics of an escalator look like? Well, Mehmet Ali Erik can tell you exactly that.
During rush hour on February 27 he got swallowed up by a faulty one at the Ayazaga Metro station in Istanbul, Turkey.
Take a look at the frankly terrifying CCTV footage below:
Initially, the escalator in question isn't moving, and there are lines of people walking down it, as well as down the stairs next to it.
But then, soon after Mehmet steps onto the (not) moving stairs, the escalator starts up again. But instead of working properly, the whole thing collapses, sending most people on it tumbling down to the bottom.
Where Mehmet is, however, a hole opens up into the depths of the escaltor. The video shows him scrambling to hold on to the handrail, but he's unable to keep his grip and falls into the hole as people on the opposite, upwards-travelling escalator look on.
According to Metro he was reportedly trapped beneath the metal stairs for an hour before he was rescued, but only suffered minor injuries.
Nevertheless, after he was rescued by firefighters he was taken to hospital by ambulance. By all accounts, Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality had put up a warning sign alerting people that the escalator was broken, but - as the video shows - a lot of people ignored it.
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We've walked up and down broken escalators many times, so to be fair we probably would have ignored it as well. Not anymore, though.
It's not the first escalator horror story we've heard, either.
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Last year at the Cuizhu metro station in Shenzhen City, located in China's southern Guangdong Province, a woman suffered a similar fate when a panel in the floor just before an escalator collapsed when she stepped on it. Thankfully, she was rescued after only a couple of minutes.
The moral of the story? Escalators are evil and shouldn't be trusted - especially if they're not working.
That just means they're lying in wait to attack unsuspecting innocents when they least expect it. Although you would probably get the day off work if it happened to you, so there's that...
Featured Image Credit: LiveLeak