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Within a five-month period in Washington state there were two major escalator accidents. In one, a escalator collapsed and injured seven mallgoers, while in the other a man was strangled in an escalator in Seattle. A News Tribune investigation found that even after the state implemented new escalator maintenance protocols, one-quarter of Washington's escalators still had known safety problems that had never been corrected. The state was also falling down on its duties to inspect escalators. While the state is supposed to complete safety inspections of escalators annually, inspectors visited fewer than 1/3 of escalators in 2013. The newspaper also discovered that more than 40 percent of state-inspected escalators may lack a safety feature that could have saved the life of the man who was strangled by the Seattle escalator.