Man without legs dies from fall on Darien Lake's Ride of Steel roller coaster

Fun, I agree. From what I read afterward. He had a stroke earlier and that should have been a warning sign that he shouldn't be riding period. It's called rider's responsibility for their own safety in a park or outside. You can't leave your responsibility at the gate for your own actions and put that on the park's shoulders.

Like I stated, I am sorry for this guy's death but if you look at it. What perfect way for his wife to get money if he dies in such an accident. The wife can blame the park for allowing him to ride despite him being impaired and in a wheelchair.

Well, that is a pretty morbid viewpoint Major. The wife should feel fortunate that she will likely get a payout?

If anyone is going to be compelled to make costly accommodations for persons with physical disabilities then it stands to reason that for profit entities are likely better able to absorb those costs than public entities.

FWIW...I'm a parks and recreation director. We have to design playgrounds for complete access to persons with disabilities even when the best case expectation of usage of that equipment might be 1 disabled person for every 10,000 children. And, we aren't talking hundreds of dollars more but tens of thousands of dollars more for the proper surfacing, equipment, bridges, etc. In the last 10 years I'd estimate we have spent close to, if not exceeding, a half a million dollars in ADA related expenses. That isn't chump change in a municipal budget.

I'm certainly not proposing that all rides must adequately accommodate all body types. If that were the case amusement parks would just be a collection of different types of wheelchairs.

Here we go. Sigh.

http://news.yahoo.com/video/health-15749655/roller-coaster-safety-a...19392.html

Meh.

"Riders were stranded at the peak -- FOUR.TEEN stories high -- for THIRTY. MINUTES. They had to SCALE DOWN the EMERGENCY stairway."

!!!!!!!!!!!!

Edit: ;)

Just lost all respect for George Stephenopolis.

Luckily, the majority of the comments are from people who get it. I don't think anyone except Ed Markey is buying into the sensationalism.

So, the video says "2 back to back" incidents. Are they acutally referring to the Texas Giant breakdown (where no one was hurt and all safety systems and evacuation procedures functioned as planned) as one of them? Just seems quite a bit of a stretch, even for the sake of journalistic sensationalism.

The comments on the ABC story are surprisingly common sense, and slam ABC being dip****s. That's actually somewhat encouraging, and validates my otherwise naive feeling that people aren't as stupid as I might otherwise think.

By definition, only half of the people, overall, can be stupid.

I tend to think that everyone is half stupid, instead of splitting the population in half, one side being "stupid" and one side being "not stupid".

It may just be a matter of familiarity. I would think that most people that have been to an amusement park have seen a coaster be down for mechanical reasons. ABC makes it sound like it is a crash.

LostKause said:
By definition, only half of the people, overall, can be stupid.

I tend to think that everyone is half stupid, instead of splitting the population in half, one side being "stupid" and one side being "not stupid".

Unfortunately that isn't quite true. By definition, only half of the people can be stupider *than average*. But if the average is itself stupid, well, that makes for a lot of stupid, stupid people.

I think we'll be OK so long as the garbage pile doesn't avalanche.

Ensign Smith said:

Unfortunately that isn't quite true. By definition, only half of the people can be stupider *than average*. But if the average is itself stupid, well, that makes for a lot of stupid, stupid people.

"The sum total of intelligence on the planet is constant. Unfortunately, the population has exploded in the last couple hundred years" - unknown

Math police public service announcement:
Half the people are stupider/smarter than median, not average.

I was going to get in to the whole mean/median/mode/average thing, but decided against it. Glad someone was less lazy than me.

Always good to know that we can count on the math police. The PSA is a nice touch, too; the language police will just throw the book at you.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I'm not good at math, Andy. That's the stupid part of me. :)

wahoo, I'm going to disagree with you on the whole rider has no responsibility on knowing whether he can ride. In this case, it was obvious. But how is a ride op supposed to know that someone's blood pressure is 200/120, or that another person had back surgery, or another has heart arrhythmia? Or for that matter that someone is 8 weeks pregnant? If people with these conditions can't figure out for themselves that getting on a thrill ride may not be a good idea, I don't know who else could.

RatherGoodBear said:
pressure is 200/120, or that another person had back surgery, or another has heart arrhythmia? Or for that matter that someone is 8 weeks pregnant? If people with these conditions can't figure out for themselves

Or that he/she is so high on prescription benzodiazepines that they have no clue and think they can fly.