I used to be a ride operator. Me and my coworkers realized that between us none have ever heard of a roller coaster restraint failing in mid-ride. Is our optomism as misguilded as my lazy spelling?
If you mean you’ve never experienced one between you, I’d say that has nothing to do with optimism, it’s simply that roller coasters are safe enough that a small group of ride operators is unlikely to have experienced one. You can check out http://www.rideaccidents.com/ for compiled news about amusement park ride accidents…very few of them are caused by restraint failure.
I know for a fact that the Superman Ride of Steel roller coaster at Six Flags New England had an obese handicapped man fly out mid ride. He fell to his death but I was more fascinated by the plight of his seatmate who was a stranger and managed to stay in. I don’t think the restraint actually failed mechanically but it failed to lock in place properly because of his situation. The ride stayed open and I have ridden it before and after and they have multiple series of redundant restraints now and every seat is checked carefully by at least two people before every ride.
The problem here was most likely not an actual failure of the restraint but a failure of the staff. By putting someone in the ride who exceeded the design specs of the restraint system it left too much space where you could squeeze out of the harness under normal load circumstances. Some ratchets will lock wherever you put them but thats usually only the older ones… Most harness systems I worked with had no ratchet catches outside of the safe zone so if it wouldn’t hit the first ratchet, customer could not ride, and almost every weekend we had somebody wanting a manager because we need to fix the ride because they are not too fat to ride. :rolleyes:
I have seen (in 10 years of amusement park experience) 1 harness fail but even then it broke off at the locking ratchet but only on one side. At the end of the ride the 1.5" steel bar stock that made up the core of the harness had bent enough that the broken ends were about 2" apart after the ride. Even when they fail, these things are usually built for serious abuse.
IME it was more likely to be seriously injured being assaulted by another guest than on any of the rides and that includes some major go cart race track pileups that resulted in multiple ambulance transports. We slowed down the cars a bit after that.
How big of a fat person can you put in a normaly two person seat? Do those locking bars acomadate someone that takes up a double seat? Can they fit in a seat only made for one person?
In my case it was always 1 harness per person, if you cannot fit in one harness…no ride for you!
Reported.