The chief executive of Six Flags says the company will install seat belts on the Georgia roller coaster from which a rider fell to his death earlier this month. The company’s rides with similar restraints will also get the safety upgrade.
The theme park operator announced the extra safeguard less than two weeks after 42-year-old Hassan Jihad Ibn Kariem of Atlanta died after being ejected from his seat on the Goliath coaster at Six Flags Over Georgia.
If you’re curious who’s supposed to be regulating these…
It’s at a state by state level (for permanent theme parks), which is why these accidents keep happening in red states.
This is just the result of decades of erasing regulations in exchange for political donations.
Wish it had more details about what actually happened and why that restraint. Wondering because I’ve never felt like that kind of restraint left room for falling out of it, even if I positioned myself such that there would still be room to move a bit after the attendant pushed it down. Though I’ve also only ridden rides with this restraint that were just a series of parabolic hills, which would probably be fine with just a lap belt, since the riders and train are pretty much both just following a ballistic arc.
Was this a mechanical failure that caused the restraint to release mid-ride? Unusual leg/pelvis geometry? Was the guy actively trying to get out, maybe not thinking he would succeed? Did he shit himself or something which added enough lubrication to slip free? What was the ride doing when he fell off, like just a parabolic hill or did it have something like a reverse bank on a turn or an inverse loop that creates forces away from the car?
When I was young, I assumed anything that didn’t have a seatbelt didn’t require one, there was no danger of leaving the seat. I don’t think I ever truly believed it, considering the fact that the school bus had no seatbelts.
Seatbelts! Of course!
Seat belts in addition to the “bar” that goes across your lap…
Which still isn’t enough, they should all have the shoulder harness, but those are expensive.
Bolting in seatbelts doesn’t fix anything, but it’s cheap and reassures the idiots who still go to the capitalist hellscapes that are modern Theme Parks.
The only reason they’re doing the seatbelts is because the deaths hurt their profits.
I’m not sure why you think lap belts won’t help. There are some rides that warrant shoulder restraints, but typically engineers use physics to determine where the loads and accelerations are. It isn’t strictly a matter of cost. Roller coaster accidents are not some rampant death trap. They could be safer, and lap belts in many cases will help.
Which still isn’t enough, they should all have the shoulder harness, but those are expensive.
I think the main cost isn’t the purchase price, but rather the operational costs of ride operators having to individually check that everyone is buckled properly. It would slow down the ride and/or increase labor costs due to multiple attendants.
