Photo by djwerdna.

Ah, riding Metro during a summer heat wave. Is there a more miserable experience? But as the Washington Post’s Dana Hedgpeth reports, being squished between two sweaty tourists on a hot car is hardly the worst thing that can happen to the Washingtonian commuter: that’s right, it’s time again to remind people about the danger of wearing flip-flops on the escalator. Prepare to meet your doom, toes!

Every summer, Metro officials say they see an uptick of incidents where riders get their shoes caught in one of the transit system’s 588 escalators. Rarely are there serious injuries other than maybe a stubbed toe or scrape. But flip-flops are a special enemy of the moving staircases. Thinner soles make the summer footwear especially susceptible to getting caught, said Ken Sundberg, Metro’s assistant chief safety officer.

“The lip of your flip-flop may get stuck if you don’t carefully take the time to pick your feet up when you get to the top or bottom of an escalator,” he said. The shoes can get caught in a “comb,” a mechanism at the bottom that’s meant to trap debris, he said.

WMATA even keeps a box of footwear they’ve pulled from escalator teeth (no, seriously) to remind people that, by wearing open-toe shoes on an escalator, they’re pretty much putting their life on the line.

Now, D.C.’s hardly a flip-flop–friendly town — and not just those of the political variety. But while our editorial slant regarding unattractive summer footwear is pretty clear, it bears repeating that by simply paying attention when you almost finish riding on any of Metro’s escalators, you’ll probably be able to avoid grim death by escalator comb.

Then again, given Metro’s current escalator outages, you won’t have to worry about any of this 20 percent of the time anyway.