Don't let safety barriers have a deadly gap
ON TUESDAY, a young woman fell at a bus stop in Wuhan city, Central China's Hubei province, and her neck got stuck between two bars of the protective roadside isolation barrier. She died of suffocation. Beijing News comments:
This is not the first tragedy of its kind. A browse of past reports shows that at least three similar accidents happened in Nantong, East China's Jiangsu province, in 2010; Mizhi county, Northwest China's Shaanxi province, in 2016; and Xi'an city, Shaanxi province, in 2017.
The primary cause of these accidents is that the distance between the two bars on the roadside barriers happens to be about 10 centimeters, which almost "perfectly" matches an average adult's neck. As a result, when people fall down beside any guardrails, there is high risk of them getting stuck and very difficult for them to free themselves. Worse as in the case in Hubei, they might die of asphyxiation.
