Study warns elevator safety standards in the UK, EU lag behind rising body weight

Research presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Istanbul warns that elevator capacity standards across Europe and the UK have not kept pace with rising body weights, potentially overstating how many people elevators can safely and comfortably carry. The analysis examined weight-limit signage and specifications from 112 elevators manufactured between 1972 and 2024 by 21 companies in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, and Finland, and found that while average adult body weight has climbed steadily, total permissible loads have remained largely unchanged since around 2004.

Historically, European elevator standards assumed an average passenger mass of 75 kilograms. Between 1972 and 2002, the per-person allowance rose from about 62 kg to 75 kg in step with population trends. But as average weights continued to increase after 2002—and by that year had reached roughly 79 kg—the assumed average stayed fixed at 75 kg, creating a gap between actual user weight and design assumptions.

Lead author Professor Nick Finer, who has studied elevator weight limit signs for five decades, compared average maximum weight allowances with the average adult weights at the time each elevator was built and concluded manufacturers have failed to adapt to secular trends in body size. In the UK, the average man weighed about 75 kg and the average woman about 65 kg in the mid-1970s; current averages are around 86 kg for men and 73 kg for women. Across Europe, the standard used by manufacturers remains 75 kg per person, even though actual average body weight is at least 79 kg.

The research team reported that maximum allowances per person increased up to 2002 but then plateaued as industry practice shifted. After 2002, manufacturers moved from weight-based sizing to floor-space requirements, adopting recommendations to size elevators on two-dimensional footprint assumptions—an elliptical area of 0.21 square meters per passenger—rather than updating the notional average user mass. The authors argue this change in methodology decoupled elevator design from ongoing shifts in obesity, body shape, and morphology, and they call for an urgent rethink to account for larger bodies and changing distributions of weight and space within cabins.

Finer’s compilation spanned elevators produced from 1970 to 2024 by 21 different manufacturers and drawn from seven countries, and it indicates that current labeling can overstate how many people an elevator can practically and safely take on a single trip. Because modern systems employ overload monitoring that prevents cars from moving if limits are exceeded, an elevator once labeled for eight passengers may now halt with seven on board as alarms trigger and doors remain open. This inbuilt protection ensures safe operation but can lengthen journey times or require passengers to reorganize loads repeatedly before travel begins.

The research contends that the floor-area approach overlooks the three-dimensional realities of larger bodies standing side by side, turning, or using mobility aids. The team says the combined result is capacity estimates that are optimistic on paper but constrained in practice, particularly at peak times or in buildings where elevators are small by design. The study points out that standardized footprints do not reflect how people actually occupy space or how weight is distributed across a cabin, especially when some passengers carry bags, strollers, or medical equipment. Finnish manufacturer Kone has stated that its sizing practices are based on the European standard EN 81-20, and industry-wide safeguards that immobilize cars when overloaded are intended to avert accidents rather than to capture day-to-day capacity realities.

Finer argues that failing to update elevator capacities contributes to social stigma for people living with obesity. He contends that posting passenger counts based on outdated assumptions can invite judgment in cramped cabins and add to feelings of exclusion when individuals fear being blamed if alarms sound or doors refuse to close. “Not to mention the physical and practical difficulties for a person with obesity to use a standard elevator with limited capacity, under the stigmatizing glances of other passengers. We need to rethink elevators, wheelchairs, stretchers: we need an oversize version,” he said, according to The Guardian.

Some policy commentators dispute that modern elevators are unsafe, emphasizing that cars will not move if too many or too large people attempt to board, and have proposed responses that run counter to redesign. One view argues that reducing posted limits could serve as a nudge to use the stairs—described as “enforced stairwell exercise”—while dismissing the need to reconfigure cabins as an unnecessary expense; it also contends that individuals too large to use a standard lift alone are already deceased, and that for the very few who cannot use a standard car, freight elevators are available, according to the Adam Smith Institute.

The researchers counter that the central issue is not whether cars fail safely when overloaded but whether the underlying assumptions match the people who use them. They note that in the UK the average man now weighs 86 kg, 11 kg above the standard that many elevators continue to use in their per-person calculations.