Alton Towers' Smiler trains collide, at least four serious injuries

If you watch this clip http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32978750 one of the guests interviewed says that the car had been stuck there for about 10 minutes and another one was stopped at the top of the lift, then all of a sudden "it just went."

This sounds like something similar that happened at Lightwater Valley on a spinning mouse. Where the ride had stopped, then all of a sudden it was started back up and crashed claiming the life of one woman. The family were awarded something like £17,000 ($26,000) compensation for her death. Shocking.

If this was due to the coaster being in maintenance mode (I think that's the case), they could have more systems in place to help prevent this, why not disable the boarding gates if the ride is in maintenance mode?, Sure this wouldn't prevent problems 100% but it may have stopped this accident if maintenance mode was the cause...if the ride had been running in maintenance mode all day? If the reports of the train being stuck on the lift are true it could've just been human error while trying to get the train moving on the lift while in maintenance mode? Bad situation no matter the cause.

Or how about a total lockout if the ride is in maintenance mode? No one in a train and no one on the platform until all trains have successfully made it through several complete circuits. Then don't unlock the place or even let ops back in until the maintenance men have restored the system to normal and cleared the ride for safe operation.
Not to say who caused the foul up, but ride ops have one job only. And that includes seating customers and operating the ride only when the ride is in safe operating mode. At no time should they play mechanic, try to fix a ride, attempt to over ride, or try to re-synch trains. That's the maintenance worker's job.
At Busch Gardens I witnessed a lockout (to retrieve a lost hat of all things) and it was serious. We were made to exit the platform (we could stay in the secured queue) and when the maintenance men got there they locked the contols and sent all ops off the ride to stand together on the ground. They could only return after the guys unlocked and ran the ride empty a couple times. It seemed like over-kill but it also seemed like a very safe procedure and nobody had a problem with it. (except the ass who lost his hat)

The thought that a manual maintenance mode even exists on these rides is enough to make me nervous for the rest of my life.

We watched them lock down Winnie The Pooh at Magic Kingdom once to do an evac. There is a huge series of locks and keys that get attached to the controls while people are out in the ride. It seemed almost excessive.

I would think that the standing policy on most rides is that you never operate in manual mode loaded.

As a former ride op, not really sure how this would happen. Unfortunately, it sounds like someone made a really unfortunate judgement call. If you went into maintenance mode then back to regular operation, the safety system might not notice a train that was missing in a valley. But a combination of visual inspection on top of a mandatory empty train cycle should have been done before sending loaded trains. I remember if the ride was down for a maintenance issue we always had to cycle out a few empty trains to ensure that the problem had been fixed.

From reading different accounts it sounds like the train with riders was stopped on a lift before it was restarted and crashed into the stalled train. The chain of events is starting to look like this:

1) Empty train stalls on course
2) Train with riders is stopped on lift due to the blocking system kicking in
3) Operators or maintenance personnel fail to recognize that the ride was stopped due to a stalled train, perhaps assume that it was a sensor failure or just "one of those things" that happens on highly-computerized rides
4) Operators restart ride and send train into a collision course with stopped train

Unfortunately, it sounds like guests tried to yell out that a train was stuck but their concerns were not heard or acted upon.

If this hypothesis is true, then a safety system such as one preventing the gates from opening while in maintenance mode wouldn't have prevented this accident. It's sounding more and more like a failure in process in that the operators didn't realize that a train was unaccounted for and restarted the ride.

What a shame. It goes to show you that we can automate rides and add more and more sensors and redundancies but we can't remove the human factor.

I am curious who restarted the ride.I would think the ride ops do not have maintenance keys/codes.The initial response was correct in that they stopped the ride.

Was management on the platform ? Were they distressed by all the guest's taking cell phone video's.The proper response would have been to evacuate the ride .But was someone trying to get the train down as fast as possible.Once the guest's are clear then it is just a shutdown.

Did whomever restarted it know there were guest's on lifthill ?

Did whomever restarted it know about stuck train ?

If a train stops where this one stopped am I correct in assuming it would have to be pulled thru to unload by winches attached to coaster supports ?

Even if the ride had stopped and was in manual mode when it was restarted, how do they not know exactly where each train is? Wouldn't a modern roller coaster have something as simple as a track circuit? If not, why not?

Modern rides use proxy switches (read: sensors) that tell the computer when a train has hit a particular point in the track. It's the computer's responsibility to determine whether a block is occupied or not by analyzing the sequence in which the sensors are fired. (In other words, coasters don't have the system that you linked to.)

Its purely speculation as to whether or not the computer system "knew" that a train was missing when the ride was restated. Perhaps they restarted the computer and it wasn't able to determine where all the trains were. It's also possible that the ride knew that a train was missing but the operators mistook it for a false alarm and overrode the system.

It's been nearly 20 years since I operated a ride on a daily basis, but I don't remember any coaster that operated with a PLC and had multiple units where running in manual mode or switching between auto and manual mode and vice versa over-rode or rendered the block system useless. In fact, when I worked on a 1 gen Intamin freefall, we ran units around in manual mode as part of our morning check specifically for the purpose of testing the block system.

A block should be occupied as soon as the train passes the proximity switches at the start of the block. And it remains occupied until the train passes the switches at the end of the block. Most likely the safety system functioned as it was supposed to (it thought the block after the lift was occupied because it was) and that's why the loaded train stopped on the lift. Where it went horribly wrong was when someone reset the block after the lift without realizing that there was a train still occupying it and then restarted the lift.

I know the ride I worked had some delays built in after you did certain things and I believe clearing the blocks and initial power up were two such events - presumably this would be to allow a train that was on the course to hit the next block and be "seen." In the case of a valleyed train though, delays wouldn't have done any good because there were no switches along the track in the valley to "see" the train. I don't think it's very common to have switches throughout the course of rides - only at the blocks. I don't think rides have the system that Greg linked to either.

This is all speculation, but it seems like a tragic human error of not accounting for all your trains combined with a manual clearing of a block from how I understand it.

^ On rides I have operated, you have to inform the controller how many trains you are operating and it wouldn't unlock until that number of trains had been detected. If you were running three - and selected that you were running three on the console; one on the brake, one in the station and one stuck out on the course because of a wheel issue, it wouldn't detect the third and therefore wouldn't reset.

Pete said:

What is strange, at least as I can see from the video, is that the train doesn't seem to have any type of bumper tied to the frame. On every B&M train I've seen, and I think Intamin also, there is a heavy duty bumper tied directly to the frame of the car that would prevent legs and other body parts from being crushed in a collision. It is strange that the trains on this ride do not seem to have this.

They have the same bumper at the back, but only a flat plate at the front. You can see the rear of a car here:

You can also get a better understanding of the impact here - note how bent the floor is:

Yikes...

This news has made me almost physically ill. That's some scary shh right there.

Saw something earlier today from an actual news site that one of the riders lost a leg.

Should never have happened.

It's unfortunate that this happened and some riders are most likely left with a disability after this incident. This sounds like an error on the parks end. I'm pretty sure there will be lawsuits over this.

hi guys just to keep you all informed here from the UK...

yes the one train went out...didnt make it back up a loop....other full train was halted top of a lift for ten mins then released....by this time the empty train was still back/forth in momentum at bottom of loop when it was hit from behind.

the front 4 have SERIOUS lower leg injuries and abdominal injuries

smiler now closed indefinitely

reports of a metalic clank was heard by a previous rider before incident as in rode the loops...

previous employers are saying human error is highly likely but the blocking system didnt work. 5 trains can operate at same time

wow....news in just....sonic spin and oblivion both broke down same day and people had to be removed...oblivion had to have a train removed !

joe pugh and his GF were 2 of the front passengers

Was this incident around the same spot where the ride's track sheared a couple of years ago?

Ugh. This is absolutely sickening. If I went out for a fun day and wound up losing a leg, or worse - I'd be damaged forever, especially in the case of a collision like this.

While extremely unlikely events have happened in the past - derailments, cable snaps, brake failure, etc - the one thing that always seems the most assuring, is that blocks are supposed to keep trains apart, and they do. (With a few exceptions where rides have had 2 trains on the lift, etc.. but those stopped quickly.)

GregLeg said:

Even if the ride had stopped and was in manual mode when it was restarted, how do they not know exactly where each train is? Wouldn't a modern roller coaster have something as simple as a track circuit? If not, why not?

Issue with the need for insulated gaps perhaps?