this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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I can manage cars, but I have a sort of mental block I've had to adopt to stop myself thinking about tires blowing out. It helps that I can't see them.
I generally only ride elevators if it's more floors than I can comfortably climb stairs, and I don't like them. Given the opportunity, I always take the stairs. And I spend a lot of my time on elevators specifically trying not to think about the arrangement of pulleys and cables that's the only thing standing between me and death. Again though, it helps that I can't actually see them.
Airplanes are sort of odd, because they don't much scare me. I think the whole thing is so complex and foreign that I can't get a firm idea of what specifically could fail, so I don't have any specific thing on which to focus the fear. I dunno - I just know that they don't scare me.
Trains are a bit unsettling though, I guess because wheels and rails are something on which I can and thus do focus. It's va fairly distant rhing though, and thinking about it is the exception rather than the rule.
And so on...
This train of thoughts (lol) can keep you healthy, but the risks involved are rather slim. Better to be afraid of mayonnaise and French fries I guess.
With how elevators are engineered these days, it would be difficult to cause one to fall even deliberately. Multiple simultaneous system failures would be required that aren't fragile to begin with. Not sure about the particulars of your anxiety, but that one you might find some relief from through research.
You can also see tests of them, which gets performed on each and everyone before certification, where they are loaded to their max weight and are allowed to slam into the buffers at the bottom. It would be uncomfortable, but survivable.
Yeah - elevators don't cause anything close to the fear that amusement park rides do (and especially traveling ones), and I presume for that reason - because I know they have an array of safeguards. Notably old or sketchy ones can make me nervous, but I'm usually okay in new and obviously well-maintained ones.
But overall I still don't like them much. and generally just default to the stairs anyway. There's no chance that they're going to trigger anything like that, and it's good for me besides.