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

I am curious as to why the design would allow that much adjustment to be made.

Wow. So many thoughts on this.

• From an engineering and investigative standpoint, this is all fascinating. The report is very well written, concise but thorough, and easily digestible. It doesn't seem like there are any mysteries left as to what happened.
• From a human standpoint, this remains horrifying and baffling. It is very hard to imagine the decision making behind altering the harness sensor position to create a couple of "fat seats" that could (unsafely) accommodate larger guests on a ride like this. If there is any mystery left, that's where it lies. How many people were involved? Was the ride manufacturer consulted on the adjustment, and if so, did they okay it? Who involved actually understood the ride dynamics, or even thought about them? Looking at the pictures in the report, it seems so obvious that the altered "go" height of the harness would be unsafe on a ride where the seats tilt down 30° and the carriage decelerates at 4 Gs.
• It was surprising to me that the harness would flex another 3" under a 250 lb load. That seems like a lot of give, and the harnesses on this ride would consistently see this type of load, if not higher, given the tilting seats and the human body leaning against the harness as the ride brakes at 4 Gs.
• It's amazing how one little goof (intentional or otherwise) in reporting can change our understanding of what happened. You may not think about how often a news article can get it wrong until it is covering subject matter that you are very familiar with. Here's a quote from the article Raven-Phile linked to (emphasis mine):

Officials announced on Monday the findings of a report into how Tyre Sampson fell from the Orlando FreeFall ride at ICON Park. A new report shows the operator made "manual adjustments" to his seat when he got on.

This is almost certainly not the case. The sensors were adjusted on the selected seats prior to Mr. Sampson boarding the ride. But if you didn't know any better you'd think that, based on that wording, he tried to get on but couldn't fit, so a ride op or someone from maintenance adjusted the sensor on the spot to allow him to ride, and he was immediately ejected. That scenario sounds more reckless and even sinister, but it is an inaccurate description of what happened.

Just something that struck me: could the striations on the seat horn that are mentioned as being caused by the rider sliding out of the seat been from normal wear and tear of people sliding over them while climbing in and out of the seat? I would assume that's a "no" since they don't make mention of seeing it on other seats. That would lead me to believe that this damage was much more severe and, with the thoroughness of the entire report, I highly doubt that's something that would be missed. This whole situation is just awful. I too wonder about how this kind of would be authorized in the first place.

Shades said:

I am curious as to why the design would allow that much adjustment to be made.

When I looked at photo 11 in the report, that was my initial reaction too. Who thought that much freedom in where the sensor could have been placed was a good idea?

Pre-made parts from a supplier are a LOT cheaper than small custom part runs.

Agreed. But on a safety device I am not sure if that is a wise move. Why give someone the ability to make a simple adjustment that raises the harness up that much?

Because you expect the person who has the ability to do that, to not do that. Ride Mechanics have the ability to deviate from protocol on a lot of things that could result in injury or death but that is not what you expect them to do because...death.

For someone who doesn't know what they're doing, that adjustment of a few degrees will yield a large change in minimum closure beyond the design limitations. Safety critical machines should be very prescriptive about what you can and shouldn't do, but again humans do human things.

Initially I said that a belt isn't necessary as a secondary restraint, and I still believe that's true. However, it does act as a low tech but effective way to make sure minimum closure happens. I suspect that if you ask manufacturers of certain other rides, they would indicate that intention.

There is a problem with that, though, Jeff, and it has to do with the otherwise generally-good design of that seat and shoulder bar. As with many European rides, the seat horn sits well out in front of the shoulder bar when it comes down, and in order to fasten the belt to the bar when it is down *all the way*, as when you have a particularly skinny or frightened rider, that belt has to be quite long to reach over the seat horn and back to the buckle on the shoulder bar. Now, I haven't taken measurements, but that also means that there will be considerable distance available in that belt when the bar is *above* the seat horn as well. Bearing in mind the aforementioned caveat, it's quite possible that the minimum belt length that allows for the lowest possible bar position would be long enough to also allow for an excessively high bar position.

I did have a thought about the whole 'big person seat' issue. Why not equip each seat with TWO bar position switches? One at a high position, the other at a lower position. The ride won't start unless the bar is past the upper limit switch. If the bar does not reach the lower limit switch, then the ride will operate...but the seat will not tilt. Since each seat appears to have its own tilt cylinder and its own set of switches to determine the seat position, that would seem to be a pretty easy software modification. My personal opinion is that Tyre would have been perfectly safe if the seat did not tilt forward and if he remained back and upright in the seat, much like the four-year-old who was NOT ejected from his bar-open ride on a Moser Spring Ride in Australia a week or two ago. Of course a qualified designer/engineer would have to make that determination, but it would certainly be a do-able thing.

Also, I had thought that perhaps the shoulder bar switch position was not adjustable, because there was no specification for it in the manual. But a test procedure would be dead easy to create, as would a test jig. It would probably require, say, a piece of 4x4 lumber cut to exactly xxx mm, probably with a vertical extension on one end. Place the jig in the seat and pull the shoulder bar down until it touches the jig. If either of the GO indicators illuminates, then the seat shall be repaired or removed from service immediately. It would be possible to test 47 seats in less time than it takes to run the locking cylinder test on the other three.

Of course the problem with this is that in order to have such a test, it is necessary to first have a standard to which the test can be applied. Where is TÜV when you really need them?

--Dave Althoff, Jr., who thinks that dimension almost had to be in the TÜV report...

RideMan said:

...it's quite possible that the minimum belt length that allows for the lowest possible bar position would be long enough to also allow for an excessively high bar position.

That may be the case, but wouldn't the belt have held the boy in place even with the excessively high bar position that he had? He may have had quite a bit of "manly" pain but I would think that the belt would have kept him from falling out.

While the belt may have prevented the ride from ever dispatching in the first place (a good thing, and the sole intention of the belt as mentioned earlier) I doubt that the belt itself could have stood up to the 4g x 320lbs = 1280lbs of force acting on it. (Through a quick google his weight ranged from 320-360)

I could be wrong, and the force could certainly be angular and less than 1280, but IDK. If the belt's sole purpose was to measure, then no, it wouldn't have been there as a secondary restraint.

There's a Mythbusters testing the strength of typical belts, and it's insanely high. Belts made of duct tape, not so much. :)

I mean, I don't know how many G's a person pulls when a car crashes into a wall, but I would think a standard safety belt is supposed to withstand that. So withstanding drop tower forces seems plausible enough.

Right, and not being able to reproduce is arguably a more desirable outcome than death.

Seat belts can typically handle a few thousand pounds at least, and at 4g deceleration a 350 lb person wouldn't have exceeded 1,500 lbf on the belt.

A standard safety belt would have handled the load without any problem at all.

Whether the geometry would have positively retained Tyre (or anyone else) in that seat is a different question.

My point is that the specific geometry of that seat design is such that the belt might not be useful as a measuring device, as it is commonly used. Which means the measurement function has to fall back once again to the bar position switch, which we now know was subject to tampering.

In terms of improving the safety of the ride as it is intended to operate, a safety belt is of dubious value. In terms of preventing the rider from submarining, it may or may not provide a noticeable benefit. Would it have prevented the rider from coming out, or would it have rotated the rider into a head-down positon for his exit from the seat?

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

The family has now filed their lawsuit. The park, operator, and manufacturers are all named in the suit as expected. The contractor is also named but I don't think we've seen any evidence that his death was the result of an error in construction. And I'm curious who are the "multiple other buinesses connected to the ride."

Typically you sue everyone. Don't want to have it that there is a party who should be a part of the lawsuit that you didn't sue. Parties clearly not liable can be dismissed from the suit going forward.

So it would be people who consulted on the ride (design, construction, maintenance), provided parts for it, etc. Anyone who could conceivably been involved/at fault. And in this case, I think they would want to make sure they include whoever made/helped with the modifications made to the seat/restraint at issue. Not sure we know who that is at this point. They can use discovery to narrow that down.