Is my fear of elevators justified?

I, Scampy, have done some research and in a nutshell:
According to a rather official sounding elevator safety web site, accidents due to steel cable breakage are unheard of.
At least twice. Good old Eli Otis, with a flair for showmanship that modern inventors rarely display, cut the cables to prove that his new safety elevator was not a death trap, and during the War when a bomber staffed by a bunch of nitwits crashed into the Empire State Building, severing cables, causing a freefall - but the poor slob inside lived to tell about it. Although nobody from "RealTV" was there to record it.
Because I can't be bothered researching this, I will work on the basis that because "actually" is in the sentence, the answer is in fact none. Then again, you probably put "actually" in the sentence to put us all off. So I'll still guess none and outwit all of you.
Before September 11, 2001, only one that resulted in an elevator free-fall. I don't know how many other cases there may have been where cables have broken but the elevator hasn't gone into free-fall due to the presence of four or five other supporting cables. Here's a snippet from the website http://www.eesf.org/safetrid/article1.htm entitled "Could the cables snap and send an elevator plummeting down the shaft?" This is every rider's worst fear, but experts say there's no need to worry. You're being supported by four to eight cables, each of which could support the weight of the car by itself.
I'm tempted to say never.... but by the odds i would say a lot (and counting)....
In buildings, once - the empire state building in 1945 after an encounter with a B52. In aeroplanes, at least twice, probably more. You did know that some aeroplanes use steel cables to control their elevators, didn't you?
In May 1995, more than 100 South African miners were killed when a locomotive severed the cable of their elevator. They fell 1500 feet, and the locomotive fell down the shaft after them. Just in case they didn't feel unlucky enough already.
Just the once. Then they figured they better add emergency brakes.
Lots of times. Steel cables are tested to destruction to determine the breaking strain.
Most of them, never. The rest, probably only once. One assumes a broken cable would be replaced rather then repaired. Much less frequently than the bronze ones and the less said of the lead ones the better. Lift (not the bloody "e" word) travel is easily the safest form of mechanised transport ever devised when you count the deaths/passenger km. I'll go for <5.
Never. They were always *sawn* through, by evil men in black cloaks and large twirly moustachios.
None, except under the extreme duress of listening to recorded elevator voices 24 hours a day. There's only so much a cable can bear.
Not as many as Hollywood would have us believe, I would think. Probably none. Hmmm, this looks like a Dr Bob Fiendish Trick Question (TM) - next you'll be telling me that elevator cables aren't even made of steel as such, but of tin-coated liquorice or some such. Does anybody have Mr Otis's phone number?
Not as many times as Microsoft Operating systems have crashed, or else they would have been banned under some Geneva convention or other.
Not as many times as one might think. HOWEVER, the long anticipated "MS Elevator 2002" program contains "smart cables" which anticipate their own breakage - i.e. "Hi! Elevator 2002 has detected that your elevator cable is about to break. We suggest you re-install the entire Elevator 2002 suite, however, you must first purchase a new elevator shaft." and "Hi! Elevator 2002 has detected that elevator cable has just broken and as a result, your underwear now needs changing. Would you like to compose a prayer? Are you sure?"... Unfortunately, Elevator 2002, contains 2,376,900,000,000 lines of code, the annual licence fee is $54 million and it generally requires the demolition and redesign of the entire building in order to house its enormously increased size.
Not nearly enough, seeing as the majority of elevators are in big corporate offices
Only once, then they replace them.
Quite a few...and normally the villain is under it, and the hero is on top of it when they snap.
Schindlers' Lifts ... think about it. Anyway, apart from the "Speed" movie by De Bont, twice it seems and wouldn't you believe it, in the same building! July 28th, 1945, an Army Air Corps B-25 slammed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building severing the lift’s governor and hoist ropes but the operator lived to tell. Then on January 25th, 2000, before being stopped by the safety system, an Empire State elevator with 2 people aboard plunged 40 stories when a compensating cable sheared. Of course, after the events on Tues September 11th, it could be 3 but I’m not going to touch that one.
The tensile strength of steel is unusually high, due to additives in its manufacture, which also reduce the amount of rust, or oxidation. Furthermore, with better building regulations since steel has become widely used, it is not generally used outside of its known tensile capacity. The fear of steel cables breaking is more a fear of misapplication than a fear of steel weakness, so in truth steel elevator cables probably haven't broken as much outside of laboratory experiments than during them.
There are no elevators made only of steel, therefore the cable on a "steel elevator" could never have actually broken.
Too many
Um, none! Ok 13 or 27 or ..... Well I do know a lot (many hundreds actually) of people were killed or maimed in the 19th century, so some must have broken. (Makes you wonder why the silly buggers didn't take the stairs and keep fit.)
Usually only once, after that the steel elevator cables become giant steel whips. Slicing and dicing all and sundry into tiny little bits.
What a timely question. At least twice - once in the north tower of the WTC, and once in the south tower. Before that, probably never.
Zero-- no, that's too obvious, one-- wait-- zero.
(Shamelessly pinched from last months answers) Toda
None that I was in at the time. I don't know about you, but I don't want to think about building failure at the moment.