To the list of dangers posed by monorails -- which includes spontaneous combustion, collision, falling debris, alien abductions, and suicidal elephants -- we can now add electrical shock.

Last weekend a worker on the Las Vegas monorail was electrocuted in the system maintenance building. A fire was also started, naturally. The worker, the fourth to succumb to the Vegas monorail since it opened in 2003, is listed in serious condition. French-Canadian monorail maker Bombardier ("Bom, Bar, Dee... YAY!") claims that he's improving, but is suspiciously keeping his details secret. Bombardier also promised to launch an investigation of the incident to determine if it was either human error or a mechanical defect. I guess "Inherent Danger of Monorails" is off the table.

Decline in ridership among a public leery of exploding into flames or falling out of doors opened into midair has forced the Las Vegas Monorail Co. to start enticing people to ride with free monorail passes. These will be offered to unsuspecting out-of-towners through the city's tourism website. Hopefully the fact that the passes are only one-way will be enough to clue in potential victims of the extreme unlikeliness of their ever returning from their monorail trip. But then again, these are gambling tourists, so they may be unrealistically optimistic.