Man dies on Goliath at Six Flags Over Georgia

Apparently this is an accurate and tragic description of where it happened. Reports are that his restraint became fully unlocked and open during the ride. It was completely open when train got back to station:

Tweets from eye witness:

"A grown man flew off the dip above the sidewalk by funnel cakes and fell back onto the cart then flew off again and landed on building"

"We were in the car. He hit our cart 3 times before hitting the roof and then hitting the ground. I got blood on my pants and my fiance got blood splashed on her face. Everybody got it."

There's also photos of the souvenir photo screen of him in the middle of flying out, if you're the type to need to see it

I'd prefer that no one link to those photos here, please.

Those B&M hypers have a redundant ratcheting system, right? Individual springs on two ratchets? It seems unlikely that a well-maintained train could fail like this. I guess we'll find out in the coming weeks or months.

Has B&M literally ever had a major failure? I'm racking my brain.

I've been checking and it looks like this is the first B&M failure ever. Previous incidents have just been people entering restricted areas, or pre-existing health conditions leading to incidents on the ride. Absolutely wild.

Thank you for making that request. I don’t even want to accidentally see that. I’m certain it will be an important and useful photo, but not for looky loos.

Yes, B&M clamshell restraints have dual locking mechanisms. The legacy Six Flags parks opted out of seatbelts given the fail-safe design; Cedar Fair installed seatbelts as a backup when their B&M’s were constructed.

I believe the B&M hyper/giga designs do not have electronic restraint position verification yet, can anyone confirm? It appears from photos circulating the rider was possibly larger in size which could be another instance of body weight pulling a rider out of the seat if the restraint was not positioned low enough to the thighs if obstructed by abdominal girth.

The odds of double mechanical failure are not zero, but they're probably close. The newer hypers have sensors to at least check for closure (they all have the video screens now to assist the crews), and I assume that means it would also prevent dispatch. At 20-years-old, I assume there was at least the closure sensor, and the "yellow line" for a visual indicator. I just have a hard time imagining that this was an engineering failure.

The restraint per reports came back fully open, I don’t see how it can be anything less then a mechanical failure.

I've been reading random arguments between former and current employees at the park on various platforms, and it seems to really be pointing to human error/rushing/lack of proper maintenance. Of course who knows right now. But from the statements employees are making... the way they have been pressured to RUSH RUSH RUSH to dispatch on that ride, 5 seconds or less, I would guess that the rider's (who is overweight) clamshell didn't go down as far as it needed to go, safety system gave a false positive, (or employee bypassed it, since one employee is saying it's not the air-pressure controlled ones but the older mechanical/computer controlled ones), and the second failsafe mechanism failed as a tragic dual-error occurring possibly because of the pressure/weight pushing up on the clamshell during the airtime hill.

EDIT: oh and to clarify, in the photos the lap clamshell appears to be all the way up. Not just that he slipped through a small gap; that thing is OPEN

If the same as Raging Bull, the train requires the lap bar to at least be down a few clicks to dispatch... Per a friend who operated/lead the ride for a few years. The computer system will not allow the ride to dispatch with the lapbar higher than the minimum required.

I accidentally saw the picture on freekin' Facebook, and while disturbing, it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I reported the picture anyway, because I find it very insensitive to the family to post that publicly. What I did get from the photo is that he didn't appear to me to be of an extremely large size.

My condolences to the family. It has been said that his son was riding beside him. I can't imagine how traumatic this might be for him.

Enthusiasts often complain about the seat belts, but I will never, ever complain about them again. A seat belt would have almost certainly prevented this from happening.

After reading replies from the morons over on Facebook, I am grateful for the civil discussion found over here on CoasterBuzz.

I'm a bigger guy, what I've experienced riding clamshells is that some parks required only 2 clicks and some have required 3 clicks. I'm no engineer or know how the 2nd fail safe works. I'm definitely curious on what is found out to cause this.

From what I remember about these restraints while the go no go point is at the same height, newer trains require three clicks, older ones only two clicks. This clicks I assume are the ratchets, which means that either both ratchets had to fail twice (or even three times) to fully open. It happened at the end of the ride, not the most forceful portion. They are also over engineered to handle far more the. The weight of a human body so I doubt the man being more weight was the deciding factor. I know to seems easy to jump to the rider being an issue, an frankly if the restraint had come back closed I would be more inclined to believe that, but the restraint failed, it became fully open on the ride. That should never happen, no matter what, this strikes me as some short of absolute catestrophic failure, I suspect we are going to find this ride was either poorly maintained or there is a fundamental flaw in those restraints.

This is absolutely awful.

Could maintenance have missed something? Could staff cuts have impacted the ability to properly inspect the rides? We know they have been cutting staff, especially in the PR positions. How much have they been cutting maintenance staff? With how intermittently Magnum has been operating at Cedar Point, I have been suspicious that they have enough maintenance staff to inspect all the rides every night, so they just don't open ones they don't have time to inspect.

Could the ride have been dispatched with the restraint down but not locked? The restraints are supposed to be jiggled to check that they are locked, but could that step have been skipped?

I'm just baffled at how this could have happened. B&M has one of the best safety records in the industry.

Jeff:

The odds of double mechanical failure are not zero, but they're probably close.

Pretty much. I just showed this video to my students last week; (4:26 starts the description on how they work and the fail-safes involved).

Could the ride have been dispatched with the restraint down but not locked? The restraints are supposed to be jiggled to check that they are locked, but could that step have been skipped?

This is what is so confusing. Wouldn't the ride's safety system disallow a train to leave the station if this was the case?

On one hand, you have a restraint design that is inherently and redundantly safe. But there is always a possibility of a catastrophic multiple point failure, but Occam's Razor makes that seem less likely versus some type of operator error.

OhioStater:

On one hand, you have a restraint that design that is inherently and redundantly safe. But there is always a possibility of a catastrophic multiple point failure, but Occam's Razor makes that seem less likely versus some type of operator error.

There's a pilot I watch on Youtube, who describes this as "Swiss Cheese." For a crash or a collision to occur in a plane, so many different things need to go wrong (the holes of the swiss cheese slices), and all these holes need to align for all the fail-safes to not work and a crash to actually occur. He basically says that these individual faults happen more often than we would like to know, but the probability of the holes 'alligning' to cause a crash or a fatality really shows multiple severe human failures to be able to lead to the system failing and the holes lining up.

The maintenance teams at Six Flags are under tremendous pressure since the merger. Budget cuts not allowing parts to be in stock, payroll cuts not allowing overtime, longer and longer operating seasons putting greater stress on rides with less time for winter rehab, delays in rehab programs to save money, staffing shortages because of a lack of skilled workers causing stress on current employees, and a feeling of unappreciation due to the cultural shift after the successful years under Ouimet’s leadership.

It all takes a toll BUT I give huge credit to the maintenance crews who are hanging in there at the parks, they still care about safety and doing things the right way. I encourage all rollercoaster and theme park enthusiasts to stop when you see a maintenance worker, introduce yourself, and simply shake their hand and say thank you to them. Without them parks wouldn’t exist!

I chose the words "engineering failure" on purpose, because I believe the mechanism as designed is unlikely to ever fail. That said, there are other failures:

• Maintenance failure: This could be a long list of things, including broken springs, worn ratchets and other things I don't know anything about.
• Human failure: I imagine that if you dispatch a person that exceeds the limits of the relevant human factors, it would be bad. But if there's one thing I would assume about this design it's that human decision making is almost completely removed by the shape and geometry of the restraint.
• Material failure: If maintenance is, uh, maintained, I suppose a part or parts could break. This seems the least likely.

Like I said, we'll know eventually.

I can’t begin to imagine what the ride ops and maintenance teams must be going through right now. How do you sit for the duration of the investigation with the knowledge that you might have made a mistake that killed someone? As someone with my own mental health challenges I can’t even begin to put myself in their shoes.