SnooSnoo said:
I think in terms of changing the industry, the Mindbender accident takes the cake. No other accident, IMO, really affected pretty much everyone everywhere. You saw new safety things implemented and better regulations for training and inspecting overall.
Other accidents were greater in damage, but nothing beats it in terms of affect.
Wrong! Sorry darling.
The Battersea accident had an unbelievable affect on the UK coaster/park industry.
The industry at that time was on its knees. Cheap package holidays were killing the local parks and seaside resorts. They were operating down massively on numbers, and the only way to keep going was to cut back on maintenance.
This led directly to the Battersea coaster crash. The track was poorly maintained and the rotten wood wasn't spotted as they didn't have people out walking the tracks.
The feedback has horrendous! All of a sudden every park in the UK was put under the microscope. Every park operating a coaster they had any doubts in tore down the wood. In the few years following that accident, the UK lost more coasters than ever before. Parks folded because without a big coaster draw, the few people who would come stopped.
Those WITH coasters (Blackpool, Morecambe, Margate and Southport are four that spring to mind) found guests didn't want to ride - even though these parks had good safety records and high maintenance schedules/budgets.
It almost killed the entire UK park industry over night. Dozens of coasters torn down, parks going from major tourist attractions to nothing, people shying away from parks in their hundreds of thousands.
For a park to install a new coaster, new safety requirements were in place. Old coasters needed to be overhauled and to comply with stricter regulations (nothing like today, but the Grand National had to finally have restraints added for instance).
So the repercussions of the accident were felt right around the UK in a huge way. I suspect in the world too - did PTC have cars with restraints prior to that point?
The saviour was Geoffery Thompson at Blackpool. Instead of shying away, he invested in new "steel" technology, and showed the public you could have safe and reliable new rides, running alongside old and reliable (and safe) old rides. His success with this strategy (caused entirely by a lack of faith in wooden coasters due to the Battersea incident) caught on and created the UK Theme Park boom of the 80's. Out of the ashes and all that. We're still seeing the problems. Rhyl and several other seaside resorts that have shut in the last ten years, have done so mainly because they tore down their wooden signature rides after the accident.
They limped on for a few years, but without that wooden draw to their parks - they all gradually faded away, while the likes of Blackpool shone on.
So, erm, yeah - Battersea probably carried the most weight of any accident so far
