Revolving garage door installers sonoma county injuries occur more often than you may think and are more prevalent than automatic swinging door and automatic sliding door injuries. Two recent lawsuits for revolving door injuries had one common factor. No daily inspections or safety evaluations were made by the management of the facilities where the revolving doors were installed. And, while critically important, the daily safety checks would not have prevented the resulting injuries in the multiple user incidents.
A store patron was entering the revolving door from the interior of the store to exit the building. From video surveillance provided, an elderly patron decided to try and enter the revolving door from the exterior side of the store just as the door panel was approaching the fixed side panel of the drum. The patron in the process of leaving the store was completely absorbed in a conversation with her friend sharing the same segmented compartment of this four panel system. Both ladies were not paying any attention to their proximity with the door wing immediately in front of them. They appeared to be less than two inches from the face of the door as they were exiting the store. When the elderly gentleman entered the zone protected by the crush protection sensor, the sensor performed flawlessly and stopped the rotation of the doorway to prevent him from being trapped between the fixed panel and the approaching door wing. One of the two ladies continued walking forward into the winged panel in front of her, breaking her nose.
A woman was leaving a store, entered the revolving door while talking on her cell phone. A mother, pushing her small daughter in a stroller attempted to enter the revolving doorway, and the doorway abruptly stopped due to their proximity with the revolving door panel and the fixed panel. The woman with the cell phone smashed her face and phone into the door panel in front of her, breaking both the glass panel of the revolving door wing and two of her front teeth.
Revolving doors can be the most dangerous type of automatic door systems found. But, that does not mean that they are not a useful product. Most manufacturers do everything possible to design products that possess multiple and redundant safety devices and sensors. The revolving doorway systems are typically the most complex products of any automatic door line. When these devices are all working in harmony with properly adjusted components and sensory inputs, there is still one aspect of these doorways that cannot be controlled. That variable is the erratic unpredictable and often impatient behavior of the average door user.
Picture a ferris wheel in an amusement park; that wheel is a vertical version of a horizontally installed revolving doorway. When a single rider is seated on the ferris wheel the revolving action of that wheel can be started. This action is similar to a single user of a revolving door beginning to enter the revolving doorway. If a rider is alone on the ferris wheel he can continually circle the ride without any interference until another rider wishes to get on the wheel. Likewise, a single user of a properly adjusted automatic revolving door is free to walk at an appropriate pace, slow down or even stop without affecting any other user of the doorway. When a second person wishes to get on the ferris wheel, the first rider is subjected to having the wheel stop while that second rider enters a gondola of the ferris wheel. So, even though the first rider may not know that another guest wants to ride the wheel, the first rider is subject to waiting, or being stopped abruptly while the second rider is loaded onto another car of the ferris wheel. The rotation, positioning of patrons, and interconnected usage make using a revolving automatic door very similar to riding a ferris wheel. The main difference is that in the case of a ferris wheel, a human attendant is usually responsible for governing the operation of the wheel, while in a revolving automatic door; the movement is controlled by a diverse network of sensors communicating with a robotic motor control device.
