In an elevator, if you press the wrong floor number, why can't you "deselect" the errant floor by pressing the same button again?

Man, I was just thinking the exact same thing——okay, I wasn’t…

Because then you could stop the elevator between floors, allowing for people to get away with some naughty elevator sex?

Because then people would accidentally hit a button twice without realizing it. And I see plenty of people who feel the need to press the button 547 times just to make sure.

And, you know, it kinda sucks when you press the wrong number, a high number, (say, 51), when you have an elevator full of people and most are getting off at 15 and under.

(I’ve done it, with a few too many cocktails under my belt).

95% of the time I’m in an elevator with lots of people, new passengers press the button for their floor even though its already lit. If a second press “deselected” the floor, it would be a very confusing affair.

Quite honestly, though, I hardly press the wrong buttons in an elevator, ever.

@Ivan Those buttons break a lot, and sometimes you’re not sure if the press actually registered. If the light doesn’t go on I always press at least one more time. Better to mash a little than miss your floor.

some people press the button multiple times when they are in a hurry or in panic.
ending up with a deselected floor would aggravate them even more.

Because then jerks in a hurry would deselect the other floors to get to their floor faster and violence would skyrocket.

Do you really want that one jerk who thinks his rush is an emergency and yours is just annoying to be able to deselect your button? You know. That one guy with the douche-plug in his ear during lunch.

Oh, Dog you beat me to it!!!

Because you could stop the elevator between floors. And because of those jerks dog mentioned…

If no floors are selected, you continue the lift to the nearest floor in the direction it was already going, and open the doors. We don’t necessarily need to stop the thing where ever it is if no destination floors are selected.

Welcome to the official Fluther Elevator Design Committee.

Richardhenry knows his elevators, I see…

how does one stop an elevator without pressing the emergency button?

Because then idiots and children (not that those are mutually exclusive) would get in, press the 7 key, wait for the elevator to pass the 6th floor, press the 6 and 7 keys, wait for it to change direction and head back down, press the 6 and 7 keys, wait for it to change direction and head back up, etc, etc, etc,

@fish4answers Electrical skills.

i thought there was another way.. oh well

Lift. Hee hee. Brits are so cute.

We don’t have flying cars yet either. We’re so far behind.

@richardhenry I thought if you didn’t press a button, it just stayed where it was. That’s been my experience.

@casheroo We’re talking about our magic new lift, where:

You enter the lift, and no buttons are illuminated so the lift doesn’t have a destination floor.

1. You press the floor you want to go to
2. The lift starts to move
3. You press the button again, canceling your selection while the lift is in motion between floors

I’m saying that the lift wouldn’t need to suddenly stop mid-transit, it could just continue to the very next floor and open the doors. As if you said “I changed my mind and just want to get the hell out of the lift.”

lift hehe Okay, I didn’t read your entire answer, I thought it was true, and not hypothetic.

How about “hold the button for x sec to cancel”? But I donno if Its worth the risk of others being able to deselect your floor.

At the end of the day, I think the additional complexity and the possibility of having to include instructions (fuck no) in a lift as to how to operate the controls outweighs the benefit that people with fat thumbs would receive.

Some elevator buttons have braille for the visually impaired. If you press it more than once, it doesn’t matter. You’ll still end up at that floor.
If the other blind person pressed it too, or some evil prankster, and you had the press again option to de-select….well you get the point.
Just trivial thinking.

I’ve often wondered why there’s no “undo” button. I can see why you wouldn’t want it to de-select if pressed twice, but I do wonder why it doesn’t work like my alarm clock, where, hypothetically, if you pressed 51 by accident, you could hold down the “51” button at the same time as the “deselect” button, and it would no longer go to that floor. Perhaps this would only work if at least one other floor had already been selected. That doesn’t seem like it would be that difficult to employ, and since you would have to hit two buttons at once, it doesn’t seem like it would be that easy to do by accident.