Danger! High Voltage

I'm not going to get into the nature of the title, you're either going to get the reference and throw things at me or you won't – and probably still throw things at me. Let me set the scene: I was in the West End of Glasgow near the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum and had just finished lunch in the excellent restaurant, Firebird, with a friend. We had been diving into cafés all morning as there had been regular short-lived, but rather heavy, showers. As we were waiting for a particularly heavy shower to pass before leaving Firebird and walking in to the centre of Glasgow to meet more friends, we decided that there was little chance of completing the thirty minute walk into the centre without becoming drenched, so we walked to the nearby Kelvinhall underground station instead. For those of you wondering what the underground is, you may be more familiar with terms like subway or metro.

There are any number of usability issues involved in an underground journey but I'm not going to start listing them off – this article would be ridiculously long as a result. I'm not even going to mention the usability issue of having to wait for the ticket seller to stop talking to the other person in her booth before serving me. Definitely not going to mention that. I absolutely was not getting ready to bang indignantly on the glass and glare at her for ignoring me for so long. Honest.

What I am going to mention is something I will be paying very close attention to in future, every time I use the underground. At the end of each carriage is a fire extinguisher, mounted a little above the floor and partially inset to the wall. The positioning prevents the device from being too intrusive and making it uncomfortable for the person sitting beside it while the slight height off the ground makes it fractionally easier to pick up in the event of use. Clearly with this arrangement the device is required to be secured in place somehow, otherwise it would fly down the aisle every time the train slowed sharply, taking knees and ankles with it on the way.

I would have expected a restraint which was simple to break as required yet without the need for reading instructions or having to fiddle with it. This is where the problem, and my considerable concern, arises. As the photograph shows, the fire extinguisher is held in place by a very sturdy leather strap with buckle and hoop to keep the free end out the way.

On approaching this in a calm fashion with no rush to free the extinguisher, there should be little problem undoing the strap and retrieving extinguisher fairly quickly – but when you need a fire extinguisher, there's really quite likely to be a fire … and smoke … and panic … and you are really quite unlikely to be calm and in a state of mind to take your time and undo the strap carefully. Your hands will be shaking, you will be rushing to free it as quickly as possible and you will very likely struggle to do so as you find your hands doing something entirely different to what your eyes tell them they need to. That assumes that you are the only one present and don't have half a dozen people bashing against you and panicking, making it even more difficult to free the extinguisher swiftly.

This is not the same sort of usability problem I've covered before. This one has the potential to cost lives. I am more than a little surprised it got past whatever health and safety body is responsible for evaluating such things. I will shortly be raising a concern with the relevant body, assuming I can find out who they are.

EDIT: On considering this a little more and looking at how loose the belt looks in the photo, I'm wondering if the extinguisher can be tilted and lifted out rather than requiring the buckle to be undone. I didn't get that impression at the time while looking at it, so even if it is possible to tilt & lift, this is still a usability issue. I would need to run some user testing to find out how much of an issue this could be, but that would obviously require the full cooperation of those in charge of the underground and I suspect that will not happen. I'll look more closely next time I'm on the underground and try to work out if tilt & lift is possible or not.