Man dies after ride on Stardust Racers at Epic Universe

Reading the reporting on this incident and the assumptions people in comments jump to have me thinking this could be a very expensive incident for Universal and the economy of Orlando in general. Hopefully I am wrong and a better explanation of what exactly happened comes out soon.

A few certainties in this story:

1) Universal obviously took notice of the Dueling Dragons incident when designing Stardust Racers.

2) it’s not surprising that many people’s first thoughts were of a similar type of cause of incident.

3) it’s also not surprising that the facts don’t initially comport with a similar style of incident

4) the general public as reflected by the comments sections are truly dumber than rocks, and a startling data point as to why the USA is doomed.

it doesn’t appear that something from outside of the train struck the passenger (decorative piece, piece of structure, bird) as those would have almost immediately been identified (other passengers would have possibly seen the incident or potential hazard, there would have been debris on the ground, etc.)

Multiple blunt force trauma is the part that stumps me. It would imply that his head hit the seat, seat frame, lap bar, or other passenger repeatedly.

My questions:

I’ve never contemplated a “rag doll” type situation where a guest loses consciousness during a ride (for whatever non-ride related reason). Along with that, how has it never happened before, or has it, and when it did, those rides didn’t provide the type of blunt force injury to cause death.

what the hell was happening with the passenger next to this guest?

If (and this is if) the ride malfunctioned in anyway to kill a 30 year old person, it should be an expensive problem for Universal and Mack. Human life is precious. It’s too early to tell and clearly some more details need to come out but it is completely unacceptable for a ride to kill a person by bludgeoning them to death. Given the safety record of amusement rides, it’s why I initially assumed it was something brought on the ride by another guest, but we need far more information first, the most important thing being the object(s) that did the bludgeoning and how they got into the ride path.

Lord Gonchar:

(It's a question mark. I'm asking! That makes it ok, right?)

"I'm just asking questions!"

This morning when I saw the headline (elsewhere) that multiple blunt force trauma was the cause of death, I had a lot of questions. Thankfully, after consulting the responses from the armchair detectives in this thread, I can state with confidence that I not only learned absolutely nothing, but my IQ dropped a few points as well.

So, you are saying just another day at the office?

What did you expect to happen? We are going to BS while waiting on facts. With the victims name being released and confirmed on his go fund me page (https://www.gofundme.com/f/...ez-zavala) he is a wheelchair user. That may or may not have factored in this.

Jeff:

"I'm just asking questions!"

I'd actually typed:

Dying on Stardust Racers > RRR

But then I tried to soften it with a little humor on top of the humor. I don't need to be getting shot, nor canceled.

Touchdown:

What did you expect to happen? We are going to BS while waiting on facts.

"We?" You're the only one doing this. The respectful response is to send positive thoughts to the family and interpret the facts that have been released. At this point, no facts have been released other than the cause of death, so posting off the wall theories is not helping anything.

Touchdown:
he is a wheelchair user

There you go again. You see a picture of him in a wheelchair and are now positing that could have been a factor. All that indicates is that he can't walk or stand for at all or for extended periods of time. How that might cause him to end up dead in a coaster station with blunt force trauma is a mystery to me.

I think I’ve expressed multiple times how horrible this is. I’m a little too tired of being told lately to just wish thoughts and prayers and shut up about speculating on causes of disasters lately. Something went terribly wrong here, I ride coasters all the time, I very much want to know what happened that caused a brand new state of the art coaster to kill someone, I have a self interest seeing as I engage in riding them all the time. The facts of this case so far appear to suggest that this wasn’t caused by a rare health defect with the victim, nor is it a case where a restraint malfunctioned. It seems like the victim was healthy, the ride functioned as intended and someone died. I don’t know about you but that scares me, a lot. I tend to cope by trying to talk through things, and that’s what I’m doing here.

This is a coaster forum, I thought that this would be a place where we could do that, and I don’t think it’s disrespectful to the dead but clearly others must feel differently. I’m not going to this man’s funeral and chatting this up with his grieving friends and family, but self censoring to the point of not being able to talk about it anywhere seems ridiculous.

Also, pointing out someone needs a wheelchair and stating that might be a factor or not isn’t victim blaming, Universal has pretty clear policies about who and who can’t ride their rides and I have no doubt he was cleared to ride. If it turns out those policies were incorrect the fault still falls on the operator. I have never stated or suspect the victim did anything wrong. Everything about this case so far is extremely atypical to most accidents on rides. This deserves to be talked about.

Literally no one brought up thoughts and prayers. We literally don't know anything because what authorities have said doesn't even make sense.

I will refrain from my usual snarky retort that I would give Phantom Tails [edited for proper attribution].

a) no one said thoughts and prayers

b) we are as confused as anyone else as to what went horribly wrong

c) we analyze the business and mechanics of our hobby to exhaustion, that shouldn’t surprise anyone when we do it regarding a tragedy

d) the deceased was in a wheelchair. Other forums have speculated as to whether he had full use of arms/core. A perhaps extreme jump, as one would reasonably believe that family, minders and/or operators would have prevented such a guest to ride

It has now been demonstrated that the deceased had use of his arms, thus ruling out the absurd dereliction of duty thought, but not answering any questions as to what went wrong.

again so many questions, none of which (here) were for gratuitous titillation, but an honest interest in learning what went wrong with what should have been a statistically proven safe endeavor.

That's what I'm saying. Not much that has been said so far by authorities or witnesses makes sense. There doesn't seem to be any way that an object from another passenger either on the same train or the other train could hit him multiple times. It would hit once and that would be it. Even if a piece broke off of one of the trains and hit him, it would not be repeated. The only way I can see repeated blows would be if whatever was hitting him was somehow still attached at the other end - like to the train or even to him or the person next to him.

So was it one of his own body parts or something he brought with him perhaps? Or is there something that could have been flopping/banging around in some way where it was hitting him repeatedly, but was still attached and could not just fall to the floor or to the ground? I hate to say that, but could it have even been the person next to him? I suppose this is probably inflammatory stuff to say, but I just don't see the "repeated" part making much sense.

Vater

Thankfully, after consulting the responses from the armchair detectives in this thread, I can state with confidence that I not only learned absolutely nothing, but my IQ dropped a few points as well.

Touchdown

I very much want to know what happened that caused a brand new state of the art coaster to kill someone, I have a self interest seeing as I engage in riding them all the time.

I think this is the main issue. We all agree this doesn't make a lot of sense (at least not yet) and it's interesting to talk about, but throwing out "the roller coaster killed someone and we all might die" when we have no proof of what actually happened is a bridge too far.

Anyway.......The "multiple" part is what gets me the most. Imagine if the bird that hit Fabio had the wherewithal to come around again and finish the job.

I did say above “what the hell was happening to the passenger seated next to him.

if we’re ruling out the most complex answers, one has to start focusing on the simplest. As crazy as they might be.

Witness reports agree that the female companion appeared fine physically upon return, and appropriately not fine emotionally.

Now there is a report of a "Big piece of metal" hanging from the victims seat from a WFTV Orlando video posted. Supposedly a part of the train itself... And a doctor was applying a tourniquet to the victim.

But the dude was dead when he got back to the station, or he wasn’t. Who knows anymore. Just label it fake news and move on with life. That the new trend these days.

I've heard a few different people in interviews say that they saw a loose object in the seat of the deceased. They said it looked like detached metal from the back of the seat. That jives with the "blunt force trauma" conclusion. Something came loose, but was still had a point of attachment, and violently moved in such a way as to hit the guest somewhere besides the head, over and over.

So it's safe to assume that it was not a phone, or shoe, or wallet.

They said someone was applying a tourniquet. So the situation was probably bloody. You can't put a tourniquet on someone's head, so this injury had to be somewhere else.

And have you ever seen the video where someone is so scared on a coaster that they pass out. Some of those have to be real, right? Makes me not believe the ragdoll theory.

It's likely we'll have to wait months for an explanation of what really happened. Sounds like some Final Destination sh!t.

He looked like a really great guy. My heart goes out to his family.

It's been hypothesized in the previous comments that someone who passed out could hit something on the train to cause trauma. I think it is plausible that they could fall forward and hit a part of the train multiple times, if their upper torso was sufficiently long. These are the trains in question:

https://rcdb.com/18071.htm#p=143277