You’re right, I did not consider that he might have been in the middle. And of course an older lift comes fast. And it’s easy to be critical when you aren’t the one making unexpected split second decisions. Definitely something to think about. All in all, I think it does come down to an inattentive lift operator at the bottom.
We once had a family member who could not open the safety bar to unload at the top (it was an ancient lift in Europe where the bar swung in like a door). She went around the wheel at the top and started heading down the mountain. It took one of us banging on the glass of the operator’s shack for him to wake up and stop the lift.