A 14-year-old boy died after falling from freefall ride at Orlando ICON Park

Paywall.

Directly from the sauce: https://iconparkorlando.com/media/

The ride manual has been posted online. Interestingly, there's a weight limit of 130kg. I don't believe there was any mechanism to make sure passengers were within that weight.

https://static.fox35orlando.com/www.fox35orlando.com/content/upload...tseats.pdf

I already have a problem with the operator manual. Specifically:

Limitation: Large people: Be careful when seeing if large guests fit into the seats. Check that they fit
within the contours of the seat and the bracket fits properly. If this is not so - Do not let this person
ride.
Limitation: Small People: The minimum height for persons able to fit into the Freefall seats is
125cm. The main point is to make sure that you do not believe the passenger can in any way slide out
of the seat. Make sure the seat brackets are properly latched. If you feel that the guest cannot safely
ride the attraction Do not let this person ride.

Again, this is deferring expertise to someone with minimal training, and certainly not a human factors expert. What does "fit within the contours of the seat" mean? Is it breasts, thighs, what? The victim "fit within the contours," but his size obviously prevented the restraint from going low enough to hold him in.

The "test seat cylinder" used to test two seats per day has a go/no-go indicator on it, page 94, and the "go" would have the restraint down much further than what it was on the victim. But the manual says that the seats are monitored to enable dispatch, which implies that the monitor doesn't match the minimum position that this analog device does.

The very last page is interesting. It's a short letter justifying "no need for an extra safety or set belt because the seat and restraint system fulfil more than the requirements." Signed by the GM of Funtime.

What requirements?

If the requirements are simply "making sure the restraints stay locked", this claim may be valid.

But for us, the requirements are really "safely restraining a rider". Considering the unique case of this tilting ride, simply assuring a harness stays locked is only a part of the equation. Another critical part is makin sure the "gap" between seat and restraint is small enough to restrain a rider. On this ride, I'm not sure it's reasonable to leave that to the ride ops.

It is an interesting discussion defining the limits of ride op responsibility.

-They should assure minimum height, as determined by an objective height gage (presumably built in with safety margin).

-They should assure no obvious misbehavior, like a rider sitting / standing on top of the restraint rather than under it, and obvious loose articles

-I believe they have some responsibility to check for things like prosthetic / missing limbs (not sure specifics though)

-Without a scale I don't see how they can reliably check for the maximum weight requirement

The odds of a reasonably maintained double-hydraulic restraint failing is probably a rounding error, but to your point, that assumes that the minimum closing distance for that restraint is met.

Jeff noted:
The "test seat cylinder" used to test two seats per day has a go/no-go indicator on it, page 94, and the "go" would have the restraint down much further than what it was on the victim. But the manual says that the seats are monitored to enable dispatch, which implies that the monitor doesn't match the minimum position that this analog device does.

That seat test device is intended to test the integrity of the hydraulic locking cylinder. It's testing for leakage within the unit, or compressibility in the hydraulics caused by damage to the nitrogen bladder. Notice that there isn't a specific position for the test, just somewhere in the green zone. When I first read your comment I thought it was a test for the restraint position, but it turns out there is not a single word in that entire manual about the allowable restraint position. It appears the "go" position is entirely arbitrary and they intend to rely fully on the operator to decide if the patron is properly secured. In that case then why have the go/!go indicator?

buckeye brad said:
The very last page is interesting. It's a short letter justifying "no need for an extra safety or set belt because the seat and restraint system fulfil more than the requirements." Signed by the GM of Funtime.

What requirements?

I'm pretty sure he means the requirements set out in ASTM F2291-20:6.4.3.8:

1. A restraint device shall be provided for each individual patron.
2. The final latching position of the restraint must be variable in relation to the patrons, for example, a bar or rail with multiple latching positions.
3. The restraint device shall be automatically locked
4. Only the operator shall manually or automatically unlock the restraint
5. An external Correct or Incorrect indication is required. Detecting the failure of any monitored device shall either bring the ride to a cycle stop or inhibit cycle start.
6. The restraint may be manually or automatically (for example, motorized) opened or closed.
7. Redundancy shall be provided for the locking device function.
8. Two restraints, for example, upper torso and lap bar or one fail-safe restraint device is required.

The ride is actually most likely built to EN 13814, but due to massive harmonization efforts both at ASTM and with the EU, the two standards are apparently very similar.

It's worth noting that the accelerations present on the tower may not strictly require a Class 5 restraint (I estimate that it is a class-4 ride) but the manufacturer has chosen to implement the requirements of a Class 5 restraint regardless of what the standard requires.

Also, I find it interesting that the manual suggests that the minimum height requirement of 125 cm (let's call it 50") is "according to TÜV report" while the maximum weight is indicated as being "according to EN 13814". Which suggests that neither Funtime nor TÜV* has actually set a maximum weight, but note that EN 13814 designates 130kg as the design maximum weight...that is, the highest passenger weight the designer/engineer is required to consider.

While I was typing, Jeff added...
The odds of a reasonably maintained double-hydraulic restraint failing is probably a rounding error (...)

...and "reasonably maintained" is precisely what that 2-seats-per-day test is all about.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

* I have been misspelling it TüV, forgetting that Überwachsungsverein is a noun...but since they agglutinated "verein" shouldn't it be TÜv or even just TÜ?
--DCAjr

I admit that I can rarely follow him...but I love when RideMan opens up can of engineering whoop-ass.

I think you point out my earlier concern, Dave. If the manual doesn't prescribe a minimum closure in the restraint, that's a pretty huge disconnect between the people who designed it and the people who are prescribing the correct use of the ride. There is some measurable minimum there, and we sadly know it's lower than what that poor kid had. The intentionality of the thigh contours and ball buster hump imply that someone knows the minimum closure for that design to work.

I don't disagree with you, Jeff, I'm just trying to report what I see. 8-)

This time I am going to tell you more about what I think.

I have been griping about the entirety of ASTM F2291:6.4.3 ("Restraints Required Due to Acceleration and Seat Inclination") ever since I learned of its existence. I don't understand what any of the requirements of the section have to do with actually keeping riders in their seats. I can generally understand that as the resolved forces shift around in various directions, the increasing restraint classes kind of map to an increasing risk of rider ejection. That part makes sense. But all of the requirements of the section are about number of riders per restraint, whether the restraint needs to be adjustable, and how it latches. It's pretty clear to me that the purpose of the section, more than anything else, was to carry out someone's vendetta against our beloved non-adjustable shared lap bars in an effort to basically legislate them out of existence. There is nothing in here about how to actually effectively secure a patron on a ride, and now we're taking seat and restraint designs that were intended to prevent a rider from coming out the top of a coaster train, and trying to understand why that design doesn't serve to prevent the rider from coming out the bottom once you take the floor away.

We know someone at least thought about the different restraint requirements for the tilt seats. The higher ball-buster, the shoulder bar with the increased surface area. But do we know if there was any particular thought given to the maximum allowable bar height? Yes, there is a go/!go limit switch, but what's it for? There's no mention whatsoever of where the shoulder bar needs to be on any given rider. There's no information given about the maximum gap beneath the bar. The instructions to operators don't even mention checking the indicator. The instructions put the entire burden of ensuring that the rider is properly secured on the operator, but completely fails to explain what that really means.

Of course the practical upshot of this is that because the operating instructions were not followed, including the push-pull restraint check, and because this particular patron was clearly not adequately secured (though I'll bet that shoulder bar was nice and tight...), this whole thing can be blamed on "operator error".

And that's a crying shame, because to anybody looking at this with a half-critical eye, this was a design defect, perhaps a series of design defects. I find it really difficult to blame the operators when every bit of information they had about the ride told them that this rider was "safe". I'm not willing to blame their training or their actions that night for what happened, because they really had no reason to believe that there was a problem. Design changes could have reduced the likelihood and the severity of this incident, in a much more reliable way than dependence on operator judgement ever could.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

(The biggest benefit to visiting CoasterBuzz all these years has been reading RideMan's replies.)

I wasn't disagreeing with anything you said Dave, just extending what you said. Interestingly, I think you look at things from a technical perspective, and I look at it more as a process problem (those who can't become managers, I guess). My suspicion is that the standards you're referring to describe intent instead of implementation, which I think is the right approach for technical requirements. That's the world I live in... tell me what the team needs to achieve, not how to achieve it. But the rub with that is that anyone validating the outcome has to pay attention to the intent of the requirements. I wouldn't think that the standards need to explicitly call out, "System prevents rider from coming out," but here we are having this conversation. I don't think the system design was validated. I'm not talking about the restraint design in isolation, but the restraint plus its monitoring device. The two together fail to restrain.

Out of curiosity, does any one know of any "identical" rides (i.e. same manufacturer just maybe different height) running anywhere else in the world. What is interesting about this accident is that it happened relatively "early" in the rides life. My understanding is this ride only opened sometime in January, and January and February are usually slower months for this type of park in Florida, especially with the Covid surge we had in January. If you treat this as a "first of it's kind", then I have to keep pointing back to a design flaw versus "fluke accident".

I'm too lazy to go back and look but I feel like we had similar discussions about a design flaw/restraint failure with another obese person being ejected from a ride. I felt then, and even moreso now, that it was possible that an OTR could technically "lock" in an appropriate position over a large person's shoulders but not keep that person from leaving the seat if the forces were such that the heaviest portion of that person's body could be pushed/pulled below the lowest point of the harness. I've got to believe that person's center of gravity (if that is the right terminology) may be significantly lower on that person's body than on a more average-sized body and that somehow plays a role.

I hate speaking about it in these terms, though I don't know how to do it in a less glib fashion.

The rider ejections on New Texas Giant and Perilous Plunge come to mind as restraints that were locked but still failed to restrain an adult of larger size.

I don't know how you automate the go/no go because, as has been mentioned here a bunch of times, the go for a larger adult is absolutely a no go for a kid. Unless the computer can make that distinction somehow or the restraints can be designed to accommodate all sizes (ala Buzz bars) I don't know how you could ever totally rely on a green light.

Walt S said:

Out of curiosity, does any one know of any "identical" rides (i.e. same manufacturer just maybe different height) running anywhere else in the world. What is interesting about this accident is that it happened relatively "early" in the rides life. My understanding is this ride only opened sometime in January, and January and February are usually slower months for this type of park in Florida, especially with the Covid surge we had in January. If you treat this as a "first of it's kind", then I have to keep pointing back to a design flaw versus "fluke accident".

They do have two other towers that use the Gerstlauer seats. One in Hasna-Park in Germany has tilting seats, and the other at Kongeparken in Norway does not have tilting seats. I rode Dropline at Dollywood but it has different restraints. I'm a bigger guy, 5'11 and 310. This kinda scares me, it's that could have been me kinda scare.

Fun said:

The rider ejections on New Texas Giant and Perilous Plunge come to mind as restraints that were locked but still failed to restrain an adult of larger size.

Don't forget the UK version of Perilous Plunge, which ejected someone at the other end of the body size scale. Designing a restraint that works for everyone is hard.

Ken Martin, an independent ride inspector, told WKMG that this was certainly not the fault of the victim. He points out much of what we've been talking about, especially as it related to the manual.

Richard Bannister said:

Fun said:

The rider ejections on New Texas Giant and Perilous Plunge come to mind as restraints that were locked but still failed to restrain an adult of larger size.

Don't forget the UK version of Perilous Plunge, which ejected someone at the other end of the body size scale. Designing a restraint that works for everyone is hard.

The park was fined for not regularly checking restraints on passengers, so I don't think it's exactly an apples to apples comparison. If ride operators checked that restraints were down as far as they can go, and then got a green light, and then someone falls out, then it's the fault of the manufacturer.

However, if the ride operators can't be bothered to check the restraints to begin with, then that's on them. Short of putting riders in a 5 point harness or a cage, even the best designed restraint won't work if it's not in contact with the rider and the ride features substantial negative g forces.