SkyHawk Safety Violation

Another video from the Facebook world. SkyHawk actively running a cycle while two people stood off to the side within the fenced in ride area.

https://www.facebook.com/gr...7828374986

According to the post, more people were let through the gate than there were available seats, and since the gate had already been locked they just... stood next to the bushes. In clear view of one of the ride operator control booths.

If that's an accurate assessment, that's a serious safety issue.

Worked one summer on Steve in 2019 and can not even imagine this happening. The whole job was to make sure there was nobody there and stick your thumb up. Nobody ever failed once, and I don’t recall a single platform safety violation not caused by guest behavior.

How many positions does Skyhawk usually operate with? Wouldn't there be an associate on the loading gates side that should have seen the two guests before starting the cycle?

So, yesterday about 11:15am my son & I rode SkyHawk. We were assigned seats 19 & 20 blue with seat 18 empty. After being secured and the lap bars pushed down, they unlocked them to re-secure someone else down a few seats. One Ride-Op was next to my son at seat 20 and reached over and pushed his lap bar down, then went over to help at the other person's issue down a few seats. Then, they proceeded to push down all lap-bars from that point on, neglecting mine, seat 18 and 17. She went to that booth near the exit and was flashing thumbs-up, so I started waving my arms and shouting to secure these other seats. The main operator in the booth apparently has indication of the lock status and made an announcement over the p.a. and she came over then to secure myself and the other couple seats. Very lax on procedures.

I was last at the park on Labour Day last year and there was one operator in the booth, one working crowd and also running to check lap bars with one other very unmotivated employee also checking lap bars. The op who was working crowd and checking bars was hustling but clearly very frustrated. They are running this park into the ground with ****ty ride operations. For a park known mainly for your rides you need to at least operate them well. Because I'd rather stay home than come to the park and continually be frustrated by operations like that.

For a look at how park operating procedures (everywhere, not just limited to Cedar Point) have changed over the decades, check out this 1993 home video from Geauga Lake at the 4 minute mark

Two ride ops stationed well inside the ride envelope of Texas Twister.

Plus I know RideMan Dave has videos of Blue Streak lap bars being checked as the train dispatches, plus the "Arrow Dance" to unlock on the old Arrow loopers.

Most ride ops are cool and good at their jobs. Unfortunately it’s a position that failure can mean very bad things. This ain’t the fry stall.

Cartwright:

plus the "Arrow Dance" to unlock on the old Arrow loopers.

I still remember riding Corkscrew in the early 2000's and the ride ops would hit the release pedal on each car as the train rolled into the station.

Ahh, the days before IROC.

I'm trying to think in my head when would've been peak ride operations at Cedar Point, and I'm feeling maybe mid-to-late Kinzel era, with a second peak during the Ouimet era?

There were definitely some hiccups before IROC that I recall from complaints here and elsewhere, I'm just struggling to recall which ones were ultimately nothingburgers or temporary inconveniences, and which ones would've had more of a cumulative effect on ops over time (e.g. all rides getting gates, everything to do with seat belts, and so forth).

For instance, whatever season it was that they first tried auto-spiels across the board and the spiels would get out of sync or were too long for the dispatch cycles and stuff like that, in hindsight I'm not sure if trains were actually being held to wait for the auto-spiels to catch up, or if that was just people taking 'normal' bad ops and blaming it on the new thing.

I would agree... late Kinzel era was probably peak for ride operations, while almost every other aspect of the park was weak. Breakers was a dump, weak food/restaurant options/etc.

I didn't get to make many trips during the Ouimet era from having small kids, so I can't comment much on ride operations then, but the non-ride operations improvements were massive. The updates to Breakers, improved food, etc were all huge wins.

The first round of auto-spiels were annoying. Too much lawyer speak and they were legitimately longer than most of the coaster cycle times, so the train would get dispatched before the spiels completed. The current auto-spiels on rides that have them seem to work a lot better. I don't recall trains ever being held for the auto-spiel to complete, they'd just dispatch and forget about the "failure to follow posted safety rules and audio announcements may result in serious accident or injury. if you do not understand these instructions or need clarification, contact a ride host. thank you and enjoy your ride on <insert ride here>" ending of the spiel.

I think those auto-spiels came around the same time they were updating control systems on some of the old Arrows, so rides like CCMR and Iron Dragon took 3-4 attempts for the train to park before the gates could open.

This Skyhawk incident to me feels the same as a guest being in a low-zone on a roller coaster. Something that would never fly even back in the pre-IROC days. If it was a ride operator it would be a different story.. I'd be less concerned about a ride op standing inside the fence during the cycle considering they've been trained on the ride and spent more time around it than a random guest. But at the same time I also feel like airgates and the mag-lock exit gates are mostly unnecessary on coaster platforms. I guess my thinking there is the trains aren't coming into the station _that_ fast, and could be stopped very quickly, versus on SkyHawk, there's no way to stop that thing mid-swing if someone decided to walk out.

What is interesting about this is that those two people look like they belong there. In fact, prior to mid-season 2001, that exact location would probably be the designated ride attendant position. You may recall that on most of the flat rides, the design was to have a perimeter fence with a 'vestibule' that pushed the exit gates out away from the perimeter at the end of about a 6' deep box. During ride operation, the attendants would stand in these vestibules, inside the perimeter fence, but outside the ride envelope.

You can probably guess what happened in 2001 to change this procedure. Hint: it didn't happen at Cedar Point, but the change was immediate.

I have read from the usual unreliable sources that it went down much as described above: a miscount on incoming riders, the entrance gate locked, and instead of going out the exit or the operator unlocking the entrance to let the people out, they declared the ride area clear and ran the cycle.

Which, to be honest about it, it was. The would-be riders were well outside the ride's operating envelope. This situation wasn't necessarily "unsafe" as those involved appeared to be well aware of the hazard and taking steps to avoid it, but it was most definitely "wrong".

As I see it, there were two failures here. One is the use of a locking gate which prohibits free exit from the ride perimeter, This caused a fatal incident on a Polyp ride at Six Flags New Orleans, and I thought one of the results of that was the widespread (non-mandatory) adoption of pressure pads or other methods to allow uncontrolled exit from ride zones. The other, more serious failure is the misapplication of policy. It soounds to me like the proper procedure was followed, in that the ride zone was checked, then the ride was started. But the ride zone check resulted in an exception which was not handled. That is concerning, and it reminds me of incidents I have seen in other parks where solo ride operators are throwing hand signals to non-existent co-workers, or attendants are checking both sides of a shared lap bar. The ritual is being followed, but the purpose has been lost, which results in the ritual becoming ineffective.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Makes me think of the lifeguards bobbing their heads up and down in the waterpark or several years ago all of the ops yelling "CHECK" as they checked restraints. Or the ritual of them looking all around to "SCAN" before giving a clear. Rituals give the appearance of extra safety, but they get so focused on the rituals that common sense goes out the window.

I think it's safe to say that someone probably got fired over this Skyhawk incident.

Rituals are the problem with almost any process or protocol. They often don't guarantee a behavior, they just check an irrelevant box. The solution, I think, is to shift as much burden on to the logic machines as possible, but short of filling a ride area with pressure pads, the Skyhawk scenario makes that impossible.

My only real experience is running rides at GKTW, but in every case, the training involves at most two steps to secure things (even for wheelchairs), and constant watching while running. If you can't do those, there are more people (carousel). These don't seem like burdensome or complex things to do.

I am all for safety rituals for these rides that have a potential for tragic outcomes when mistakes occur. I know I joke around on here some, but being a 30 year airport employee has me well aware of how critical following proper procedures is. Same can be said for many other professions/occupations. Following the procedures for taxiing an airplane to an active runway is critical, same as loading and operating SkyHawk at CP.

I think the issue is when the "rituals" (in CP's case, IROC operating guidelines), don't actually account for unusual or potentially dangerous situations like these. So much emphasis is placed on "you have to do it this exact way or you'll get in trouble" that no one stops (or has the autonomy to stop) and do something that makes sense.

I work at a place that has NUMEROUS policies and procedures (SOPs) in place that we are to follow. If we don't, people can get hurt and/or lose their life. But, due to the nature of my job, there are so many different scenarios and variables that cannot possibly be fully contained in a manual that basically says "if this, do that". At some points I am dealing with an issue that, per our SOPs, could be handled in different ways.

Policies are meant to be broken, wisdom is knowing when.

Per policy, no guest is to enter a restricted/fenced area. But when you see a boat get dislodged off a lift hill, roll down, and partially flip in the water with guests in it.... well.

There’s nothing wrong with the procedure. It’s when the procedure becomes ritual, where looking around and checking the box becomes the objective, that there is a problem. The attendant checks the perimeter, catches the exception. So what happens next? And I stress here the importance of context! We saw the video. We should be able to note that the people in the video were in the wrong place, but I argue not in imminent danger. When the exception hit, the proper action (removing the people from the exclusion zone) was not taken. But we do not know that no action was taken. I don’t want to assume that the hazard was not mitigated.
But the implication then is that there isn’t a procedure for re-opening the entry gate to allow people to exit, and that’s almost more disturbing!

—Dave Althoff, Jr.