If you missed this story in Saturday’s Washington Post, do make sure you check it out, for your own personal safety if nothing else. It seems the enormous popularity of the ugliest shoes on the planet, Crocs, has led to an alarming increase in the number of escalator mishaps on Metro this summer, as the shoes’ soft resin soles can easily be grabbed by the metal teeth of the moving steps. Once trapped, the Crocs, along with soft rubber flip flops and sandals, end up mangled in the works, leaving the shoes destroyed, the escalators out of service, and in the worst cases, toes and feet seriously injured. Twenty-five objects were stuck in Metro escalators last month, most of them “shoe entrapments,” according to officials quoted in the story.
Apart from making Mallrats required viewing for anyone who is issued a Metro fare card, we can think of a number of solutions to this problem. One of them, of course, would have to be the popular DCist commenteriat hobby horse of doing away with the escalators all together, but even if that were to happen (and we’re not putting it past Metro General Manger John Catoe to try it, given that he’s all about abolishing unnecessary luxuries on the transit system, like carpeting), it would take some serious time to accomplish. In the meantime, the growing Croc-wearing army continues to fan out across the city, wreaking havoc on safety and style for the rest of us. Sadly, Catoe lacks a certain amount of vision on this important issue:
Just the same, with millions of visitors coming to Washington and more escalators than any transit system except Tokyo’s, Metro General Manager John B. Catoe Jr. said he is considering issuing a warning to customers. “We can’t prohibit what people wear,” he said. “But I’m going to recommend that we put out some kind of safety notice.”
But why can’t we prohibit what people wear? We already prohibit behavior on Metro, like eating and drinking, solely for the sake of cleanliness — requiring riders to abandon their Crocs for the sake of saving us from having to look at those ugly-ass shoes safety seems all the more rational. We often shake our fingers at Nannyism on the part of the D.C. Council, but if this isn’t a cause worthy of that legislative body’s penchant for keeping us safe through telling us how to live our lives, we don’t know what is. Ban Crocs Today! Visit this web site to find out more about what you can do to promote escalator safety.
