You know it is almost coaster season when this shows up in the news...

http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/news/local_news/investigations/study-am...epartments

It seems like when the coaster re-run shows start appearing on TV in the Spring time, than these stories always pop up in the news.... geeez

The link won't work for me.

Wow. Quite honestly I'm shocked. 92,885 children; sweet, innocent children, injured on the rides that we love most.

BUT WAIT! This study collected data from 1990-2010, meaning that only 4,644 children were injured each year on rides. But still, this is terrible! We should ban all rides because they're dangerous!

BUT WAIT! Apparently only 33% of these injuries occurred on "fixed-site" rides, like those at Cedar Point, a point that this article practically skips over. This means that only 1,533 children are injured each year across the United States. But still, that's terrible! Save the children!

BUT WAIT! Lets take into account the sheer number of parks throughout the United States. But we don't want to reduce the quality of our research, so we'll consider only major, chain-owned amusement/theme parks in our evaluation. That means that we'll only consider Cedar Fair Parks (11 in the US), Six Flags Parks (11 in the US), Disney Parks (6 in the US), Universal Parks (3 in the US), and SeaWorld Entertainment Parks (5 in the US), which means that, assuming that all of these precious children are injured at major amusement/theme parks, then 43 injuries happen each year at a major amusement/theme park.

BUT WAIT! Considering that Cedar Point has 139 operating days this year, that means that 1 child sustains injuries at Cedar Point (assuming a lot of things, as according to RCDB, there are over 280 operating amusement parks in the United States) every 3.5 days. This number would be significantly less at parks that operate year-round, like Knotts, the SeaWorld Parks, the Disney Parks, and the Universal Parks. (For those of you wondering, its 1 child every 8.5 operating days)

I know we all know that amusement parks are safe, but its fun to consider how faulty the reporting really is. Perhaps they should check their facts before they report that "Amusement ride injuries send thousands of children to U.S. emergency departments."

+1 :)

I hate the fear mongering media

What the report hints at, but fails to blatantly state, is that many if not most of those injuries come from those inflatable moon bounce things that most parents don't think twice about letting their children use. Not the big scary rollie coasters.

Also I'd like to know how many of those injuries (at least half proably) happened from a child or there parent not looking at the safety signs posted at attractions.

I would imagine more kids get injured falling and scraping there knees on concrete than they do on rides at Cedar Point. I guess we should start a petition to have all amusements parks tear up all the concrete and replace it with that soft rubbery turf they use on running tracks.

Amusement parks are dangerous. Let your kids play on the playground instead. Oh wait....

http://www.cpsc.gov/Media/Documents/Research--Statistics/Injury-Sta...eased-401/[url][url].

Let your kids play sports instead. Oh wait....

http://www.chop.edu/healthinfo/sports-injuries-statistics.html

Just let them ride their bikes. Oh wait....

http://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/bikeinjuries.html

Just keep them inside the house.

Ralph: The study cited specifically excluded water slides and inflatables.

This particular study is, to my mind, academically irresponsible. It uses the exact same data set as the most recent CPSC amusement ride injury studies: 20 years of CPSC NEISS emergency room data. The difference between this study and the CPSC study is that while the CPSC study overstated ride accident rates because of sampling biases (basically one reported injury will show up as 50 across the country, for starters, even if there was only one injury...), this study takes the already skewed data set and filters it to include only those incidents involving patients under age 18.

The NEISS data are great for injuries that are fairly widespread. It is a reasonable tool for identifying serious common hazards. But when the hazard is comparatively rare, particularly if the hazard is most prevalent in a limited area of the country, it becomes a progressively less accurate tool.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.