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Incident on Rip Ride Rockit

Nic

Strata Poster
An incident occurred on Rip Ride Rockit on Thursday, leaving a woman with minor injuries. She was treated by on site medics and returned to the park shortly afterwards. Whilst no details have been released, the ride was closed down for safety investigations following the incident. The coaster eventually reopened on Saturday afternoon.

http://m.wesh.com/theme-parks/parkgoer- ... index.html
 
That's all nice and vague :lol:

So she could have slipped getting out of the train, or leaned forward too much and bust a lip on the brakes or anything? Bad cramp in the leg? Sounds like the press want to be sensationalist after NTG and are just grabbing anything.
 
That video on the link is just so pointless. Urgh </3
It does say though that she was injured when the vehicle came to a stop.
 
An E-Stop perhaps? If this was the case then at the guests weren't 'terrrified' as they were on Air.

It is true to state there have been an abundance of isolated theme park incidents in the last month or so, but the press cannot seem to acknowledge that most are just coincidental and insignificant. Minor injuries occur all the time and as Furie said, they literally are grabbing anything and branding it a major incident with very limited information. And anyway, the injuries (if any) sustained from recent incidents (save 1) have all pretty much lacked astringency.This ride is clearly unsafe!
 
Put on your tin foil hats for this one. To go along with the press taking anything related to coaster or amusement park incidents, US Senator Ed Markey from MA wants more federal oversight on amusement parks. Besides the Texas Giant deal, there isn't much of anything else going on. If they grab onto everything going on and create a panic, then the government has an onus to act and come up with more regulation. I personally think this is one of the worst ideas possible. Seriously, why would we in the US want a body with the efficiency of the federal government overseeing yet another industry that has proven to have very few problems over the years? Not to mention, when there are problems, they have been dealt with properly within the industry. I also realize that in the US, the individual states take responsibility for inspecting rides currently.
 
The idea of having a federal standard for safety in the is is. Good idea though. Having parks do all the investigating allows them to cover anything they want to up.
 
In all honesty, who wants to read about incident reports ALL THE DAMN TIME?! I get it that we get curious about the major accidents, but I would get annoyed for every "Kid acts stupid and falls off Carousel" story that will literally be forced upon us.

Seriously, what will the US government do if they somehow get an overviewing of all ride safety? More than likely raise up cost to get into parks (as they will HAVE to get money in some manner for having to think up the same regulations most states already have), make some outrageous rider regulations that wont be met by most of the US fat@$$ population and just create an unnecessarily amount of problems that they will claim to be able to fix (but looking at their track record, is utter ****) and never will. Plus, every little, miniscule papercut will most likely have to be made public if the government gets involved (or at least anyone requiring the parks nurse to step in).

Leave the industry alone, it has very few accidents that are usually freak accidents that happen every so often due to rider error or is the parks fault.
 
Such a stupid news story. For all we know they might have just fallen over in the queue line, or banged their head on the seat. From the article it sounds like the park first aid team treated it, and they didn't even go to hospital. It feels like they are trying to make theme parks seem like a death trap with all their non-news items.
 
Looking at it from an external point of view, the way the US do it at the moment seems quite strange to us.

We have an independent body that inspects every ride to give it a one year bill of health (ADIPS). They're supported by the amusement park industry in the UK and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

Essentially, the HSE say "don't kill people, and prove to us how you're avoiding killing people". ADIPS is one method of giving the HSE proof. So if there's an accident, the park can say "we followed the ADIPS guidelines, they checked the procedures and said we were okay". If the park doesn't follow the procedures (like Oakwood with Hydro), then they get the book thrown at them by the HSE.

Everything here is done through the government when things go wrong (or with inspections if they think you're not doing enough and things are heading into doing it wrong territory) - but it's still self regulation until that point.

The US is very much based on money :lol: I know there's a degree of self regulation within park chains and some states also do safety checks. However, it seems that most of the regulation is done by insurance companies. They're the people who will have to pay out if there's an accident, so they are the ones who do the checking to ensure parks and fairs are doing everything they can to be safe.

Now, is there an independent body the insurance companies all go to for advice on how to insure a park and ensure they're acting in a safe manner? What is the procedure a park's insurance company go through each year to check that the park is behaving?

We don't know, and I think that's part of the issue. The other part of course is money. As soon as you introduce money into the situation, things can go badly awry as Joey hints at.

It could be that a park manager/director is also on the board for an insurance company. The insurance company obviously don't want to make a pay out and the park don't want to be blamed. So it's possible for things to be covered up by one person in the right place. However, you really are into foil hat territory there, but we all know that corruption does happen (everywhere in the world).

What I don't get is how if there's a death, the police aren't more involved. The investigation should be carried out by the police, with the assistance of the park and insurance "experts". You need that independent authority overseeing things to make sure it's all above board.

I don't think the US industry needs a federal park equivalent of our HSE though. We're a small country, so it works for us. Maybe some better guidance, but let's face it, the deaths and injuries in the US on parks is a grain of sand next to a boulder of other avoidable deaths and injuries in the US. However, it's much more newsworthy than drunk drivers, gun accidents and poverty because these people are meant to be having fun!!!
 
Did not know they were testing new trains.

Not a big incident tbh, the new heavier train did not slow down enough and tapped the train in front. The person fell over and got a plaster.

We had the same on the sky ride at Alton, maybe we should have sued lol.
 
Sensationalism to a 't.'

They've tried pushing for federal oversight of rides but it's been shot down I think four seperate times now. The industry is one of the safest in the country, it's just that media coverage makes you think it happens a lot more often than it really does.

A kid fell over at Six Flags America getting off the Pirate Ship, I'm amazed they didn't cover that.
 
She was kinda, but didn't scream bloody murder like some people would over a child with a scraped shin. She just picked the kid up and got him out of everyone's way.
 
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