Obstacles Near Emergency Exits Speed Evacuation

BuzzSkyline writes "Despite fire codes that require emergency exits be clear of obstacles, some types of obstacles actually speed evacuation. The counterintuitive conclusion resulted from a series of experiments performed at a TV studio in Japan. Researchers from the University of Tokyo asked 50 volunteers to exit the studio through a narrow door. Video tapes of the experiments show that people made it out quickest when a pole was placed about 30 degrees to one side of the exit. The lead researcher believes an obstacle reduces jamming and friction among people in crowds by decreasing conflicts as the crowd presses toward the exit. A paper describing the research is scheduled to appear in the journal Physical Review E in September, but a preprint is available on the Physics Arxiv."

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the woman on the pole that's causing the premature evacuation

Not realistic enough

[VMaN]

I wonder if those volunteers were realistic enough.. They should have set the place on fire to see some face stomping, and in the long run maybe save lots of lives..

People act very irrationally when they are afraid of being burnt alive for some reason.

Lofty goals

[xZgf6xHx2uhoAj9D]

Yanagisawa said that the next step is to program models of people intelligent enough to self-organize into a line.

Personally I think it would be most useful to model humans :\

Re:Counterintuitive conclusions

[causality]

It's shocking that anyone in this day and age still finds it surprising when scientific experiments produce counterintuitive results.

Why is it shocking? Is it ... counter-intuitive for you?

Re:Counterintuitive conclusions

[Culture20]

the only really intuitive interface, as some wit once remarked, is the nipple.

And yet I've never seen one person try to suckle a laptop pointer-nub.

Re:Counterintuitive conclusions

[girlintraining]

the only really intuitive interface, as some wit once remarked, is the nipple.

And yet I've never seen one person try to suckle a laptop pointer-nub.

They were too busy with the joystick. :P~

Why a Pole?

[consumer_whore]

Would a Russian or Italian be as effective?

Re:Counterintuitive conclusions

[girlintraining]

You're lucky. I've seen a person too busy with a mouse.

Yeah, but I've never seen a mouse with force feedback. XD

Re:Research of evacuation jamming?

[sentientbeing]

I was at this casino minding my own business, and this guy came up to me and said, "You're gonna have to move, you're blocking a fire exit." As though if there was a fire, I wasn't gonna run.

If you're flammible and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit.
[Mitch Hedberg]

Re:Didn't seem to help with Titanic evacuation

[RoboRay]

By "slight" I meant "severe." This is what's known as "sarcasm."

You also seem to misunderstand what a "pole" is. They go up and down. A horizontal "bar" is what you are thinking of. The article is NOT proposing putting bars or other actual barricades that have to be climbed over or crawled under around emergency exits... Just a simple vertical pole to encourage traffic to form a line, rather than a mob all trying to force their way through a door at once.

Re:Counterintuitive conclusions

[Hognoxious]

A set of data transfer wires. They can be parallel or serial.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[girlintraining]

It's the woman on the pole that's causing the premature evacuation

Riiiight. Always the woman's fault. You know, there's pills for that little personal problem.

Re:Research of evacuation jamming?

[CecilPL]

Unless you're a table.

Re:Not intuitive at all

[Mr. Freeman]

Actually, the asshole in the escalade will try to get in front of everyone else. Then the asshole in the lexus will follow that.

Re:Similar to a traffic circle?

[Mr. Freeman]

Roundabouts help immensely with congestion and crashes. There were far too few before all these roundabouts were built. The accident investigators were getting quite bored.