What Markey proposes would not have prevented this accident, especially given the mounting evidence that Six Flags was likely negligent in their maintenance of the ride. Furthermore, the sharing of information and national industry reaction was instant. Without any federal oversight, similar rides all over the country were closed immediately and inspected after the accident, many for several days.

At risk of sounding like a Republican, legislating causes like this "for the children" adds to the crushing over-spending the feds already do. If there was a measurable impact, a clear cause and effect, where the law would do the things Markey says it would, I'd be all for it. This bill isn't that.

Even more unfortunate is that Markey has had this as a pet cause for ten years, wasting untold cash and time on it, and yet he's one of the more vocal proponents of something truly useful, like Net neutrality.

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At risk of sounding like a Republican...

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Seems you've been doing that more and more lately.

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[While fixed rides are not, m]obile rides in this country are regulated by the CPSC. Because of this additional oversight one might expect mobile rides to have fewer injuries than fixed-site rides. However, accidents on mobile rides make up nearly half of the total injuries reported by CPSC between 1997-2004, despite ridership being lower at these attractions. This illustrates that the CPSC jurisdiction over mobile rides has had little impact on their safety record.

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The biggest problem that I have with this guy is not that he wants to regulate the industry, it's that his proposals are completely useless. The rides not under CPSC jurisdiction are overwhelmingly safer than those that they have control over. That's a fact, not just industry spin.

It's regulation for the sake of regulation, and that's a waste of time and money. Nothing he has proposed will help anyone be any safer.

I guess you're right that regulation in and of itself isn't necessarily something anyone would oppose, if it were meaningful. The debate in the hearings should be one of, "Does the industry do enough to regulate itself, in combination with state agencies." And it should be a debate without using the "do it for the children" tag line.

For the sake of argument though, consider Kathy Fackler's comment:

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"If this girl's legs had been severed in a lawnmower accident, or an ATV accident, the Consumer Product Safety Commission would have investigated. If she were an employee of Six Flags, instead of a paying customer, OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] would have investigated," Fackler said.

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Join the debate. How would what he is proposing have prevented the accident? Your assertion that "obviously" the current system isn't enough somehow implies that more regulation would have led to Six Flags not being negligent in the maintenance of the ride. Back that up.

I feel tearribly sorry for what happened to her and several of the issues that happend in that incident have already been addressed.

Put in this legislation, I almost guarantee there will be no change in safety related incidents at parks. 99 percent of them are USER ERROR..

Hate to say it but TOOL comes to mind.

KTS, From you other post on the message board, Sorry but if some proven terrorist with intentitions of killing more americans can give info on several others. I say rack em up, Waterboard em, Castrate em, Whatever it takes.

Chuck, saying thats just another bleeding heart cause to be in the spotlight. There is no Humane for people that are worse than animals.

Neither the amusement or the airline industry is in the business of killing or maiming their customers. It's bad business.

I am all for amusement park safety, but I also believe that we need to stop regulating everything and let the free-market system take care of things on it's own.

For what it's worth, the system worked here for Kaitlyn. She got a decent settlement for her pain and suffering. The parks, not just Six Flags, re-evaluated their drop towers, and made adjustments in the process. No one told them to do this. They did it so they did not have similar accidents and end up with huge lawsuits in the process.

And for Charles, I only pointed out that he was a champion against torture. I never said I agreed with him Honestly, he is one of the most liberal members of congress. For some people that might be a good thing. I can't stand that myself. Still, I gotta be honest and say that he isn't wasting any more money on pet projects than any other senator or congressman is. All politicians are good liars and they will say or do anything to get elected.

Anyway, Jeff has done a good job with my perspective on this. If we run the clock back to 1999 when Ed Markey first introduced his legislation, two things we could count on: First, the nation would be $5,000,000 poorer from allocations to the CPSC. Not a lot, but it's still $5M. And second, Kaitlyn Lasitter would still be short about a foot and a half. I'm sorry, but the CPSC is not in the business of doing proactive incident prevention, except to the point of trying to avoid preventing repeated mistakes. If the SFKK incident was caused by a design or maintenance problem (and we don't *really* know that yet) then the CPSC methodology would require that the incident occur before anything would be done to prevent it.

About the only thing that would be different is that the other drop towers might still be closed today pending the outcome of the CPSC investigation. That's about the only thing that would be different if Markey's bill had passed.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

The last time this was done was WWII and before that the Great depresion.

Someone hit the nail on the head, The more govt. regulation there is just means more $$ for someone.

I hope like hell Kaitlyn just gives her message and moves on without being paraded around as a tool like Cindy Sheenan (Again another tragic case turned pimped to death by polititians.)

Chuck, not trying to sound insensitive, Just factual.

One of the problems though from what I understand is the resistance of such companies as Disney and Universal to let inspectors in because they're worried that secrets will be let out as to how some of the attractions work. But, I don't think it hurts to have a second set of eyes inspecting attractions.

Every time there is a problem with a California ride they government hijacks the ride and the resulting state reports have in some instances failed to place blame where it was due.

I agree with Jeff that Markey appears to be using Kaitlyn. She's being feed lines and is clearly not informed on the overall situation, for which there is none.

Dave is absolutely right that Markey's bill wouldn't have prevented this accident.

Did anyone else notice that Kathy Fackler has in her most recent editorial stated the causes of the Superman accident as if they're fact instead of hearsay.
*** This post was edited by egieszl 5/16/2008 12:37:54 AM ***

Here's what I don't understand. If Markey really wants to do some good with amusement ride safety, why not...

1) Set a target standard for all states to follow, with the threat of Federal intervention, preferably based on industry standards.

This is why we have a uniform set of building codes and traffic laws. Those things are not Federally regulated, but the localized variations are minimal enough that the standards are reasonably consistent. Why? Because the legislation is based on industry standards.

2) Establish a specific program for registering amusement rides and collecting incident data.

3) Establish an incident response team to handle ride incidents in the same way that the NTSB handles aviation incidents

Any of those things would be a lot more effective than simply granting the CPSC the authority to do what other agencies are already doing.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

When all is said and done he will have contributed nothing to the safety of amusement parks across the country but he will be perceived to have done so much good.

Basically, isn't that the goal of a politician?

As Dave already alluded to, there are uniform standards, generally ASTM. There's nothing "hit or miss" about it.

And no there hasn't been a settlement.*** This post was edited by Raphael 5/16/2008 10:03:42 AM ****** This post was edited by Raphael 5/16/2008 1:05:10 PM ***

Why aren't legislators jumping on that bandwagon? Because there is nothing sexy about, "child falls off 15 foot slide onto pavement below and breaks neck." But, make it "Disney ride to blame for child's lost limb" and you have something that networks will carry and a politician can get face time for.

Of course the amusement parks are going to heavily influence the ASTM standards. They and amusement ride builders are basically the only folks that know anything about what they do. Sure, you might have some influece from steel manufacturers, physicists, etc but who else can write the standards? Certainly not politicians.

But, where is the outcry about playground safety? There isn't one. Why? It ain't newsworthy.

The woman who fell off the ride and was killed at Dollywood because the NECK RESTRAINT wasn't closed properly? (Talk about misinformation!)

The woman whose son was "obviously" too short for the ride and nearly fell off. His parents had to hold onto him to keep him from slipping under the restraint? (Obviously, this woman needs a Congressman's help to keep theme park employees from forcing her and her son onto rides for which he's too short. Maybe Markey can put in a line item in the next budget to get this woman a brain.)

Sure we could let the Feds regulate amusement ride safety. These would be the same Feds who gave us the hammer and toilet seat that cost over a thousand dollars each. Plus the 12 pages of a manual devoted to the description of said hammer. With the Feds in charge, I'm sure a few parks would be inspected and given the go ahead to open around late-August or so.

I wouldn't feel too bad about the kid not being able to go to the mall. Every month it seems we hear about half dozen or so people being shot at some mall or another. Maybe Markey could look into safety at shopping centers for his next project.

The reason the Dept of Agricultrue is in juristiction of this is because statistically there are more Carnivals and Fairs than fixed site rides. They know what they are doing or either hire those who do to do these inspections.

Like has been pointed out, Yeah S**T happens once in awhile it''s going to no matter what inspection, regulation, requirement ect you put on it. ITS VERY BAD PR TO HAVE A ACCIDENT, Parks aren't fighting like you hear they are. They may try to quiet or not even let the press know about stuff but thats in their best interest as well. ALMOST ALL cooperate fully or risk getting shut down with those in charge of inspection and investigation.

You can't have a government official inspect every ride every day. There is no amount of jurisdiction or regulation that would have prevented the SFKK accident.

I'm a state certified amusement ride inspector. I'm sure that I could do a better job at writing standards and regulations than a random government bureaucrat.

If you look closely at the state that have regulatory programs, you will find that they encompass almost all of the states that have fixed amusement rides. The state programs fall into several different categories. In general, amusement ride regulations are handled by one of the following:

o Department of Insurance
That's what Texas does. The State does not have its own inspectors or inspection program, but they require operators to have insurance, and they require annual inspectors by qualified third-party inspectors. Which is easy enough to do because that is usually a requirement of the park's insurance carrier anyway.

o Department of Labor
Very common. The department of labor usually includes OSHA so it's a natural fit for safety inspections. The bad thing about this is the states that use the Department of Labor often do not have dedicated amusement ride inspectors. This seems to be especially common in New England.

o Building and Elevator Inspections
Common where the Authority Having Jurisdiction is a County or City, as is the case in Clark County, NV or New York City, NY. (New York rides are inspected by the Department of Labor, but the State does not, or at least did not, have jurisdiction over rides in the City). Again, this sometimes means the inspectors are not dedicated amusement ride inspectors.

o Department of Agriculture
This is extremely common, and probably related to the fact that Agriculture already does inspections, particularly weights and measures. Every state that I know of that has amusement rides in the Department of Agriculture has a separate division dedicated to amusement rides. Examples include Ohio, Pennsylvania...and Kentucky.

In any case, any State that has an inspection program will either require a third-party inspection or perform its own third party inspection, or both. Any state that has such a program will insist that such inspectors be qualified. In many states, that qualification is defined by an engineering license, or (as in Missouri) an engineering license or certification by NAARSO and/or AIMS. That's right, there are TWO industry associations which offer inspector training and certification programs...AIMS is an association of manufacturers, and NAARSO was started by regulatory inspectors. In addition, California and Pennsylvania have separate certification programs for their inspectors. In Pennsylvania, every ride MUST be inspected by a Commonwealth certified inspector (such as kpjb) on every operating day. I don't have a Pennsylvania certificate, but I have attended their school (and in fact gave a lecture there this past spring) and can tell you that it is an intensive school not unlike the NAARSO school. So regardless of the department having jurisdiction, amusement ride inspectors are, in fact, specially trained and qualified to serve as amusement ride safety inspectors.

The question also came up about the ASTM standards and who writes them. Amusement ride standards are the responsibility of Committee F-24, which handles a number of standards relating to amusement rides, most critically the F 2291 standard, which is the world design standard. There are nearly 500 members of the F-24 committee, and they are not all industry people who would prefer to avoid regulation. Just thinking back to the last committee meeting in Orlando, I know there were representatives of manufacturers, major parks, smaller parks, a couple of people who have been involved with all three, attorneys of various affiliations, independent inspectors, jurisdictional inspectors (including the inspection division chiefs of more than one state), representatives of foreign standards organizations and regulatory bodies (such as TSSA in Ontario), carnival owners, industry organizational representatives (including OABA, AIMS and IAAPA), academic experts, and even consumer representatives including Kathy Fackler and myself. Sure, I am outnumbered by the Disney lawyers, but the structure of the committee is such that decisions are made by consensus, and any negative vote must be supported by an argument that must be addressed by the committee. If you don't like the way the standards get set, then do something about it. ASTM membership actually costs less than many season passes. It's not for everybody, but the point is, the ASTM standards have a much broader base of influence than you might think.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Volvo can have the safest cars in the world, I can get a government regulated inspection of it at normal intervals, but if I intentionally drive it at 100mph with flat tires, it will still wreck.

So now why don't you help ME understand two things:

1) How would this piece of legislation have helped Kaitlyn Lassiter?

2) If CPSC regulation is the answer, why did a CPSC-regulated Chance YoYo collapse and injure 24 people at a California fair yesterday? Do you think their injuries hurt any less because the ride has a government stamp on it?

No one's arguing that these rides don't need inspected properly, especially me since that's my job. This piece of legislation will help no one and prevent nothing. It's useless. Period.

You totally avoided my question.

I'll ask again.

How would this piece of legislation have helped Kaitlyn Lassiter?

If CPSC regulation is the answer, why did a CPSC-regulated Chance YoYo collapse and injure 24 people at a California fair yesterday? Do you think their injuries hurt any less because the ride has a government stamp on it?

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seems to me there should be a way to figure out something so menial as rust and major amounts of splintering wire rope.

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There is. The proper procedure is in the owner's manual. Doesn't help if no one reads it.

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so how is it that this cable was so deteriorated?

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Was I not clear enough in the first paragraph of my last post? Go back and read it again.

Lassiter is spelled Lasitter*** This post was edited by Raphael 5/17/2008 2:44:25 PM ***

This park DOES have government regulation. They DO have standards to follow. They just DIDN'T.

Do you suggest a federal official watches the inspector read the manual? How would they know if he understood it? How would they know if that person gives a crap? You can't watch 100% of people 100% of the time.

So I'm asking again. Seriously. How would you enforce this?

No one is arguing that there should be no standards and no regulation. They're saying that this legislation of Markey's is useless, and that the industry as a whole is overwhelmingly safe.

You have federal, state and local officials who inspect bridges, and yet that one in the Twin Cities collapsed. Planes still crash from time to time. Terrorists take down buildings (even domestic terrorists in Oklahoma City). These are all areas where there were people from federal agencies charged with oversight, and bad things still happened.

I struggle with the idea that there wasn't something that could've been done to prevent what happened to Kaitlyn. The truth is that there was... if the people who owned and operated the ride were doing their job. What Markey proposes doesn't make it any more likely that they would do their job.

So you make it federal jurisdiction? WHo they going to hire to inspect? THE SAME PEOPLE WHO DO IT NOW!

Yes, It's true! Darn true!!!!!!!!

Not only did they not surpass the manufacturer's recommendations, they didn't even come close to them. They screwed up.

When you say that the cables had plenty of lubrication because they smack off the greased rails, you're not taking your job seriously.

When you say that you don't do what the manufacturer requires for testing the cables even though it's in the owner's manual, you're not taking your job seriously.

When a girl loses two feet and the park representative says that they stand by their inspection procedures, you're just plain dumb.

Raphael, as far as third party inspections, I would find it hard to believe that there were none done at all.

While I'm not intimately familiar with the workings of SFKK, I know that at every park I'm familiar with, to get insurance they are required to have a yearly third party inspection. Oftentimes it's much more stringent than the government requirements. I know of rides that were removed from parks even though they were legal because the third party that inspected them for the insurance companies didn't like them.

It's always better to have another set of eyes on something. The problem is who does these third party inspections, and how often? To do detailed, thorough inspections of these rides, they need to be done every day. That's not something that can be done by an outside entity.

At the end of the day, it's the park's responsibility to have trustworthy, competent employees. Nothing can help you if that most important link is broken.

Let's start with what we agree on:
a) Rides must be inspected daily by qualified inspectors. For what it's worth, this is a requirement of ASTM F 770-06a:6.3.

b) Rides should be inspected by the jurisdictional authority. For what it's worth, this is a requirement of KRS 247.234.

c) Rides must be maintained in accordance with the manufacturer's specifications. For what it's worth, this is a requirement of ASTM F 770-06a:6 not to mention KAR 16:020§5

d) For whatever reason, the Kentucky Kingdom ride did not comply with (c), above. Lapses in (a) and/or (b) are clearly indicated.

Now here is the problem:

Ed Markey's bill, which has reached various stages in the United States House of Representatives but never passed into law or even passed by the House in each of the last ten years, has two basic provisions.

1) Remove from the Consumer Product Safety Act the language which specifically exempts fixed-site amusement rides from CPSC jurisdiction

2) Increase the CPSC budget by some amount (which changes with each re-introduction of the Act).

Now, let's consider the fact that the CPSC already has jurisdiction over mobile amusement rides, such as the one that collapsed in California this weekend (California, by the way, also has a strong inspection program for mobile rides, so with two different levels of government overseeing the ride, something still managed to go wrong). What exactly does this mean, and what would it mean in the Kentucky case?

The CPSC is responsible for protecting the public from hazardous consumer products. They are NOT, however, responsible for auditing product design or operation to insure product safety. There are far too many products introduced to the market for the CPSC to do that, and to approve all new products would essentially bring new product development to a halt. So the CPSC employs a more effective methodology for rooting out bad products: they investigate known product failures. When an injury is traced to a particular product, the CPSC investigates and attempts to determine the proximate cause of the incident. If that cause turns out to be a design defect in the product, a recall is issued and the manufacturer is enjoined to come up with a fix. Or if there is nothing wrong with the product, the manufacturer may be required to change the product packaging, warnings, instructions or other details to make sure the consumer is warned against the possible injuries associated with the misuse of the product. As you can imagine, they apply a similar methodology to amusement rides, sometimes with mixed results.

What that means in the case of the Kentucky Kingdom drop tower is that absolutely nothing would have changed in the situation in which Kaitlyn L. was separated from her lower extremities. The biggest difference is that following the incident, the CPSC would come in and say, "Hey, there's something wrong here!" and would request the shut-down of all similar drop towers pending the outcome of their investigation. The CPSC would conduct an investigation, and assuming that the allegations of improper maintenance are correct, would probably issue a bulletin telling all the owners of similar towers to immediately inspect their rides, and to perform maintenance as described in the maintenance manual. Ms Kaitlyn would still be justifiably upset (I can't resist saying, "hopping mad" even though it is incredibly poor taste...), the current proceedings would still be going on, and the only change in this conversation would be that we'd be arguing about whether the CPSC is effective at investigating amusement ride incidents or not. What DID happen was that every owner of an Intamin drop tower (including Kennywood, which is the one tower ride owner in the US not associated with a chain of parks that has more than one) shut its ride down and performed a detailed inspection on the wire ropes and sheaves. From news reports, we know that Cedar Fair found problems with the ropes on the tower at Carowinds, and I would assume that was not the only park where problems were found and presumably fixed.

To put it another way, the proposed legislation is a fix for a problem that does not exist. What Raphael is alleging...and what I think the rest of us might even agree with...is that another problem does exist in the enforcement of the existing maintenance standards. The thing is, nobody has yet introduced any legislation that would solve the problem that DOES exist.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

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So since you are in the industry and I guess work behind the scenes, what would work, in your estimation, for this to never be allowed to happen again.

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Not in the industry, nor do I work behind the scenes. However, I think I can provide an answer to this question:

Nothing.

Accidents happen. Even with the strictest of rules and laws. Even with countless eyes from countless organizations looking at the rides. Even with human perfection.

Accidents will still happen. It's easy to forget that these rides are machinery. Machines fail on occasion. People make mistakes on occasion. Several people working towards the same goal make mistakes on occasion. There's no guarantee anywhere...ever...on anything.

Regardless of who was at fault and for what reason in the SFKK accident - nothing can guarantee this won't happen again.

I didn't say THIS incident, nor did you ask about THIS incident. You asked about letting this happen again. I even qualified it with, "Regardless of who was at fault and for what reason in the SFKK accident" to make it clear that I wasn't referring to that incident specifically.

Will you stop using bold, confident letting at me if I lie and tell you that another set of eyeballs looking at the rides will guarantee the safety of everyone who ever rides an amusement ride at any park, fair, carnival or place of amusement?

Sorry you don't want to hear the truth.