Safety Overkill?

CP/PKIdude said:
ok so everyone will say its over kill till something happens, one of the corner stones of cedar point is safety. Now is the amount of extra time it takes to check a lap bar really worth it?

Only if someone says "Check" out loud at the same time. This is what truly makes all the difference.

...And sometimes the changes are a result of Something Bad that happened at another park, not necessarily even another FUN park. And sometimes it is just something that is a good practice, or something that seems like a good idea, or a change that comes out of good practice elsewhere in the industry or even in another industry.

On Magnum, for example, it makes perfect sense that the co-dispatch panel is located in such a brain-dead location: it is on the opposite side of the track and at the other end of the train from the doghouse. It doesn't happen to be right for that ride, but it makes logical sense and it's easy to argue in favor of it. Never mind that the ride ran for a decade without any kind of an electronic interlock on the controls. That doesn't change the fact that it is "accepted good practice" to do what they did.

Cedar Fair, it can be argued, practically invented ride safety as a discipline apart from operations and maintenance. Now it's ingrained in the industry to the point where there are people whose job it is to sit around and figure out what can possibly go wrong and how to avoid it before it does.

There is also the liability issue. Some of it is to protect the park should something go wrong. If someone claims that his lap bar wasn't checked, there's a procedure in place that makes sure that it was, and that the procedure was double-checked. That's why they touch them, not because it isn't adequate to look at them. It is also good for the operators to be absolutely sure that when something bad happens, it wasn't because they missed something.

Finally, a certain amount of what goes on is "safety theater". It doesn't make a bit of difference in terms of keeping the ride safe. If they don't do it, the ride will still be safe, but if they do, it won't make it any more dangerous. Meanwhile it reassures all the mommies waiting in line that their kids are well cared for.

Yeah, there is a lot of silliness. What is even worse is when someone who is accustomed to the silliness goes to a park where the silliness doesn't happen, and actually feels it's not safe because the silliness isn't happening. I'm kind of sad to see that happen, myself.

(Speaking of silliness, anybody got a photo of the Herschell kiddie boat ride at Busch Gardens Williamsburg with the fully-enclosed boats? That one is really silly, and worse it is enshrined in the ASTM standards...)

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I agree about the overkill.

When it comes to the kiddie rides, I just use a car key when the ride is over, to get my daughter out.

Btw.....

R.I.P Ernie Harwell. You will be missed.

crazy horse said:
I agree about the overkill.

When it comes to the kiddie rides, I just use a car key when the ride is over, to get my daughter out.

Btw.....

R.I.P Ernie Harwell. You will be missed.

Indeed a sad day in Detroit. Baseball lost a legend. R.I.P. Ernie

mrdeedsatl23 said:
...with 300+footers at the point, I think any safety precaution needed to be taken is necessary and is not a waste of time at all.

Speed and height also have little to do with how safe a ride is.

MagnumFan said:

If what you're saying is true, why the change over a 30 year period since I was a kid?

Keep in mind that in 30 years it seems our society has not only gotten less intelligent, but also much more lawsuit happy. For better or worse, I personally suspect those two factors are the biggest reasons behind the increase in safety measures.

Interestingly the rides that I think might have the most potential for injury do not have a seatbelt. Those would be the carousels and Cedar Downs. It's so easy for anybody, child or adult to let go of the pole and fall off, maybe hit their head on another horse. I've never heard of any incident anywhere, but I would think it has happened somewhere.

I've seen carousels in the mall that had seat belts. I'm not suggesting they add seatbelts. It's just an observation.

As for the other kids rides other than the Dodgem, Kite Eating Tree and Frog Hopper and maybe the helicopters, I don't really see a need for them. Actually, the Lolli Swing could use something more than the chain they have, but it seems to be adequate.

Ralph Wiggum said:
Keep in mind that in 30 years it seems our society has not only gotten less intelligent, but also much more lawsuit happy.

Less intelligent and less willing to take personal responsibility. That is why Cedar Point no longer says "pull up on your lap bar to ensure that it is locked". Many people cannot be trusted to do even the most basic things to ensure their safety.

RideMan said:
Finally, a certain amount of what goes on is "safety theater". It doesn't make a bit of difference in terms of keeping the ride safe. If they don't do it, the ride will still be safe, but if they do, it won't make it any more dangerous. Meanwhile it reassures all the mommies waiting in line that their kids are well cared for.

Amen to that! Kind of like the increased "security" at the airport. If it looks like they are doing more to keep us safe then dad gum it it's safer!

Jeff said:

mrdeedsatl23 said:
...with 300+footers at the point, I think any safety precaution needed to be taken is necessary and is not a waste of time at all.

Speed and height also have little to do with how safe a ride is.

But it provides ease at mind and makes the ride more enjoyable =)

With regard to carousels...

As a general rule, it is widely considered safer for a kid to fall off of a carousel horse and land on the platform than it is for the same kid to fall off the carousel horse and end up dangling from a strap and thus get dragged up and down by it. Think of the old cartoon gag where the character rides a horse and the cinches get loose, resulting in the character bouncing up and down between the ground and the horse's belly.

(anybody remember what cartoon that was?)

Anyway, the general wisdom is that it is safer for the kid to fall off, go *thud* against the floor and start whining than it is for the kid to get all tangled up among a bunch of moving parts.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Yet many parks still use the seatbelt (or what I call a backpack strap) on their carousels. One of the first things I did when I was brought into a park last year was remove the belts used on their carousel. We had zero accidents all season long:)

What was worse was when Six Flags was insisting on people using them. Even big people like me, for whom the strap is actually too short. So the operator figures out that by raising it up on the pole it will fit, but that means when I lean back, I'm actually tensioning the strap which is now behaving something like a low backrest...

...until the plastic buckle fails, the belt recoils and nearly strikes the rider on the next horse, and I darn near fall off the back of the horse. Yeah, that was a real safe idea...

(this was at Wyandot Lake, so it was a few years ago. I think Six Flags has ended its carousel belt kick.)

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Wow! Sometimes I really would love to meet with the people who make these decisions to ask "Why?!".

My theory is... someone sent a "smoking gun" email... someone at some point sent an email (which would be discoverable in court) that said, "should we add seat belts to all the kids rides?" Once an email like that is sent, you have to change something, prove that action was taken. Otherwise, if someone were to fall off and get injured, that email would be on a large screen behind someone from the park as the plaintiff's attorney asked them questions.

"Did you know it was possible someone could fall off the ride and be injured?"

Just a theory though... some things don't belong in email.

I think a perfect balance would be something in between the way Disney and Cedar Fair operate. I agree Cedar Fair sometimes goes overboard with safety but Disney doesn't seem to take it into consideration enough. On my last trip to Disneyworld, I noticed they seem to be operating rides so quickly they didn't check to make sure everyone was safely seated. On the teacups, they started the ride without walking around to check to make sure everyone was seated and we weren't all sitting down in the ride vehicle yet. There 2 or 3 more minor things I saw that I can't remember right now.

Clevelandkid said:
Interestingly the rides that I think might have the most potential for injury do not have a seatbelt. Those would be the carousels and Cedar Downs.

I believe Cedar Downs does have the leather belt with holes that you can strap around you.

^ I don't believe so.

Nope, no belt on Cedar Downs. No belt on the other one in the US, the smaller, faster ride at Playland in Rye, NY.

That's as of closing day last year, of course. Who knows what goodies they have cooked up this winter. Remember, over the last couple of years we got the idiotic door straps on Giant Wheel, the bar-belt on the Tilt-A-Whirl, and additional hardware on the Matterhorn. What next?

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

OTSR for Cadillac Cars! Really though, I thought the door straps on the Giant Wheel were just dumb. Then again, I also think seatbelts on Giant Wheel are needless (they are still on there, right?). I am shocked that they have not added belts to Sky Ride.