Why do escalators and elevators break down so often?

Part of the reason is safety. A sudden failure of a watch or computer won't hurt anybody.

A sudden stop of an escalator can leave a bunch of people with broken bones. Worse: if the endless loop breaks, people can fall into the mechanism, and get cut into pieces.

There's a pretty high safety standard, and probably not enough qualified building inspectors to go around.

Moving parts. There are broken ones and one that haven't broken yet.

Another name for a broken escalator is "stairs"

Cheap chinese crap that cam over on a banana boat and did not last 10 minutes.

We once had a friend who works for Otis, the elevator people (and Mr. Otis invented the elevator, BTW). He said that one reason escalators go down so often is that they are belt or sometimes chain driven, and the belts stretch and need to be tightened often. If not replaced. My bank is getting a new escalator - one up, one down. They say almost a year to do the job.

The repair people are not trained or experienced.

They are really complicated mechanisms, with many more moving parts than an elevator. One of the escalators in my building kept breaking down so they replaced it. I got to see them take out the old one and install the new one. It took a couple of months, not a simple task.

What do you call a broken escalator? ....Stairs.