Richelle McCaskill-Diaz, who has worked on elevators and escalators for about 30 years, said the stoppage showed the system may have worked as intended.
"An escalator that's well maintained should not expect breakdowns," McCaskill-Diaz said. "All the safety features that would shut off an escalator usually are [there] to prevent a disaster from happening."
She said escalators have have what is called a comb impact switch that is meant to stop an escalator and prevent it from moving forward if something is stuck in it.
"If, in fact, somebody had tripped or had actuated the comb impact switch and it stopped, it did exactly as it was intended to do," she said.
Rauch agreed that if something triggered the upper comb impact switch, it could indeed shut off the escalator.
He added that, from seeing the video, "it did not look like a very hard stop at all."
https://www.npr.org/2025/09/26/nx-s1-5553465/trump-escalator-unga-safety-mechanism