'Chasing the thrill' may contribute to growing number of amusement ride accidents
Regulator says incidents are up, but 95% of injuries are 'minor'
Buy the ticket, take the ride, they say. But when it comes to thrill machines on the midway, there's no room for recklessness.
Two high-profile accidents in the United States last week have renewed focus on amusement ride safety.
- Girl, 6, critically injured after falling from Ferris wheel
- Straps 'busted loose' for 2 people on waterslide
Last Monday, three kids tumbled from the bucket of a Ferris wheel when it flipped at the Greene County Fair in Tennessee. One girl, a six-year old, suffered a traumatic brain injury.
Just a day earlier, Caleb Schwab, 10, died after riding the 17-storey "Verruckt" waterslide at the Schlitterbahn Waterpark in Kansas.
"Verruckt" translates from German as "insane."
There's always something more exciting. But that always comes with a risk.- Jane Conte, personal injury lawyer
Toronto-area personal injury lawyer Jane Conte represents clients who've been hurt when fair rides go wrong.
She's seen an uptick in local cases, and partly blames a kind of arms race in amusement park ride design.
"They always have to be higher, they always have to be faster, there's always something more exciting, Conte says. "But that always comes at with risk, and a cost. And unfortunately, with injuries."
Most injuries due to rider behaviour: TSSA
His team will inspect every ride at this year's upcoming Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto. They'll also check to ensure exhibition staff are properly trained and accredited mechanics are on-site.
Neate agrees that the chase for a greater thrill plays some role in amusement park injuries, but says bad rider behaviour is usually the problem.
In most of the cases when something goes wrong, it's something the user does.- Roger Neate, Technical Standards & Safety Authority
"In most of the cases when something goes wrong, it's something the user does," he says. "It's important they don't try to get that thrill on their own."
Neate says "the ride creates the thrill," and that riders shouldn't try to amp things up on their own. "You don't want to stand up in a ride to escalate the thrill [if] it's meant to be seated. If they try to do something to escalate that thrill, that's when something's gonna go wrong."
Serious injuries still rare
The TSSA recorded 556 "occurrences" of hurt in 2015. That's up from 519 in 2014 and more than six times higher than the 88 occurences counted in 2010.
The agency attributes the increase to more rigorous reporting by ride operators. It also says serious incidents are rare, with 95 per cent of injuries deemed "minor in nature."
But Conte says one serious injury is one too many.
"It's that one brain injury or that one head injury, and it doesn't make that person or that family feel any better to say it's rare."
The TSSA says there hasn't been a fatality in the amusement devices sector since 1998.