Terrifying moment man almost has his head chopped off by falling lift

One very lucky man had a narrow escape from a grisly death after he almost had his head chopped off by a lift.

Security cameras inside the lift spotted the moment it stopped on a floor to let one man out and another in, only he had barely any time at all to actually get in before it continued moving.

With most of his body inside the lift he was faced with a split-second decision to either commit himself to trying to get into the lift or get away from the snapping mechanical jaws of doom.

He picked the latter option and elected to get back, pulling his body out of the rapidly rising lift and managing to duck his head out of the way of danger just in the nick of time.

If he hadn't got out of the way his head would likely have been chopped off by the rising lift, which showed no signs of stopping for the human being stuck in the way.

In many lifts there's a special safety feature that stops it from moving if the doors are still open, and prevents the doors from closing if there's something in the way – like a person.

Not this one, apparently, as the floor doors didn't shut properly until the lift was almost away and the lift doors were still open as it went between floors.

All he could do was sit and wait for help while worrying that the cables might snap or he could run out of air.

When it comes down to it a lift is essentially a big box in a hole suspended by a few bits of cable – the cables are very strong, of course, but if something goes wrong that's not much of a comfort.

While some scary episodes are down to a faulty lift we don't help ourselves at times either, as one woman who accidentally dropped her car down a lift shaft can attest.

She'd mistaken the lift for a free parking spot and drove in, her car falling 10 metres and landing upside down.