I think Fierce Pancake may be onto something. A few years back, some of you may recall a rash of church fires being reported in the press, but, as it turned out, the actual number of churches set on fire was either the same or had decreased slightly (can't remember off the top of my head), in that year in which there had been so much media attention to the issue. The number of such fires hadn't increased, but the 'first' story happened to hit on a day when it received more national play than it might have otherwise, and subsequent church fires, now having a peg to hang off of ("Our viewers will recall that terrible church fire last month; well, there was another one, and we're there live!").
I suspect the same thing is going on here. Newspapers and tv stations (and insatiable cable news channels), hooking new ride accident reports onto previous reports, are blowing it all a bit out of proportion.