Disconnected Elevators

We have two elevators in our apt building. One's a small passenger; complete with a nice mirror where you can preen yourself for a min before stepping out and the other is a bare bones freight elevator. Both face one another. Now I have seen elevators where if they are adjacent to one another they can coordinate with one another and given a passenger request only one of them will service that call. But somehow it does not work with elevators which are on opposite walls. Does not make sense, does it? Just because they are not side by side does not mean that they should be incapable of talking to one another. I have seen this plenty of times. Early morning when people are always in a hurry, they will press both the down buttons. After that both the elevators will stop at all the floors while coming down. Now if they had just noticed that one of them is already servicing the request, the other one needn't have done that completely useless trip..It is anyways going to be always behind the first one as it still has to stop at all the floors where it's service has been requested..

Anyways. hopefully someone from the elevator business does come up with a solution to this. Will surely save some electricity.. and more importantly some swear words from the person who barely missed the first elevator and has to come down on the second :)