Cedar Fair cited for OSHA violations

^ Same goes for where I work. I use an order picker (a type of forklift where the controls and the person go up & down w/ the load) on a regular basis. The boss has yet to say a thing about any saftey, except for making sure the truck is chocked before I go on it and something about going too fast.

So what happens when a chain lift motor gives out and a walk-down is required? Do you stick every rider in a harness?

It's OK if guests fall, just not people working. :)

I had a walk-down from SFA's Superman when the chain broke. (Have I mentioned that before?) Even with the relatively skinny Intamin track, I found it pretty easy to walk without feeling like I was not secure. Having a harness in that case would seem ridiculous to me.

Yeah, I think you may have said something once or twice about that in passing . . . ;)

OSHA covers employees falling. If a guest falls, Ed Markey is your savior and hero. :)

In NH, they have a clause in the law coverin "inherantly dangerous activites" This covers such things as horseback riding, going to amusment parks, skydiving, ect. It basically states: "You get hurt, the operator et al, is off the hook."

The walkdown and the Hep-B issues are basically the same. The guests are there voluntarily, and are somewhat accepting the risk when they board the ride or step into the pool. The employee on the other hand is "required" to be there as part of his or her job; therefore, the proper protections must be provided. (How's that for alliteration?)

I think one of the problems with OSHA is they have "one size fits all" regulations, that don't take into account conditions unique to different industries and businesses.

You don't have to have a safety harness to walk up and down the lift. You have to have the harness if you're going to do any sort of work while up there.

For example, a ride supervisor walking up to talk to people in a stopped train would not need a harness. Evacuees from said train would not need a harness. The worker going up to change the bad sensor would need a harness.

As far as tying off on Blue Streak or Millennium Force, what are they tying off to, and is it rated for a blunt-force impact of a person's falling weight? A hand railing is fine to hold on to, but is not rated for fall protection. If the park gives its employees harnesses, and they tell them to tie off to a hand railing, then they're still not providing adequate fall protection.

RideMan said:
This whole thing smells like an OSHA inspector spent a day at Cedar Point on vacation and saw a bunch of things he didn't like, so he went back to the office and started writing up fines....

Possibly he was irritated by paying $18 for prison quality meat product and soggy fries served at a snail's pace and it put a damper on the day. After all he's gotta eat. Expect to pay $20 for prison quality meat product and soggy fries next year, $19.79 with season pass discount.

"Youdon't have to have a safety harness to walk up and down the lift. Youhave to have the harness if you're going to do any sort of work whileup there."

Not true. Any employee, working within six feet of an unprotected ledge with a drop of more than 4 feet MUST have fall protection. Climbing a coaster hill, if there are not railings on both sides, then YES, you should be using some sort of fall protection (*** as an employee ***) This could be in the form of a positioning harness, a retracting life line attached to a full body harness, etc.

J

I thought the limit was a drop of more than 6 feet...

There are ways around that. Define "unprotected edge". Also, define "working". Notice what kpjb had to say about his examples. This is how you can climb a ladder without fall protection, but you may require work positioning gear once you get to the top.

Quite often, if you are climbing a lift hill stairway, the argument is that while there is no railing on the track side, the track side does not qualify as an "unprotected edge" because the track itself is an obstruction, even though it isn't at railing height. Yeah, it all depends on what the inspector will allow. Oh, and a work positioning belt is not qualified as fall protection.

(Why is it that the equipment that OSHA requires for fall protection looks a lot like the equipment that sport climbers abandoned 20 years ago?)

And for what it's worth, I noticed that Diamondback has chain link fencing stretched across beneath the stairway, and under both sides of the track. So apparently on that ride they're going for "drop of less than 6 feet".

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

CPJ, let me just say that as someone who has been up Magnum's lift dozens of times, there is no fall protection provided or required there. Requiring fall protection on something like that would be exceedingly stupid. A walkdown woruld take 4 hours when you have to give fall protection to every guest as well.

I can certainly understand requiring it for someone leaning out over the track to replace a prox or something like that, however.

Matt - but OSHA couldn't care less about a guest walking down the lift. Of course, as a guest, I would be a little uneasy if an op comes up with a harness on, ties off to the railing and then tells me that I'll be fine as long as I am holding onto the railing.

Ha! That creates a pretty funny picture.

MDOmnis- I'd rather have a walkdown take 4 hours than explain to someone's family their loved one won't be coming home.

Show me that anyone has bought the farm during a walkdown and I might decide your post isn't ridiculous.

CPJ: Are you an OSHA inspector?

From a conversation in this thread in another forum:

If some of this seems draconian, welcome to OSHA compliance. As {this poster} told our {staff} when we were trying to reach {electrical code for workers} compliance - OSHA doesn't care if we make money, or how long it takes us to do a
job. They want zero injuries. So it is our job to figure out the
most efficient way to be compliant.

Of course, I called this person out on this point. The claim is that OSHA wants zero injuries. But the point of fact is that for the most part (not knowing Cedar Fair's record) they have already achieved "zero injuries". What they have not achieved is full compliance with the rules promulgated by OSHA. And because of the way the rules are written, you are not fined for causing injuries, or even for allowing to exist a workplace in which injuries are likely (that is, in which known hazards are not addressed). You are fined for violating the OSHA rules.

Incidentally, lift hills tend to be a little bit hazardous just because the stairs on a lift hill are *not as steep* as a normal staircase. Go figure...!

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

As the person Rideman was quoting - Ok, I'll admit, they aren't after zero injuries. They are out to enforce the rules that a committee decided is the One True Path to Zero Injuries. In any case, the goal is to meet the rules, while not going bankrupt.

And yes some of this is silly. A certain recently swallowed amusement park chain got rid of their climbing walls, because their operators were not allowed to use the same equipment as the guests. They would have to use a manlift to do their inspections, and to assist any guests who got scared. How would that look? Kind of like the operator tied off while evacuating untied guests from the train.

That same chain was fined for a certain one of a kind wooden roller coaster. Then they had to meet the OSHA rules without burning the ride down and starting over. One of the ideas that came out of that was to treat the track as a "horizontal handrail". The track is the top rail and bottom rail. So you add a midrail, and voila, you can walk the catwalk without a harness. The local OSHA people bought into that. I don't know if an actual MOU was written.

As I mentioned in the posting Dave was quoting from, they also went out and had some custom fall-arrest equipment made up specifically for roller coasters. Siamese lanyards, special hooks, lanyards made to wrap around timbers. Was it expensive - yeah. Was it cheaper than a second OSHA fine? Definitely.

Do people violate OSHA rules? Yeah, when I was building ski lifts, you could pretty much expect that you would never see an OSHA inspector hiking up the mountain. So some of us climbed up whatever, used recreational climbing harnesses, and left our hard hats and safety glasses in the truck. The problem with that was, when someone got hurt, it was a long trip down the mountain in the back of a 4 wheel drive to get to the hospital. If it was really bad, they would call for medevac. But sometimes we were too high for medevac.

And some guys got hurt. I don't agree with probably half of the rules OSHA comes up with. But I do like the fact that their presence means that employers at least have to think about safety a little bit.

No arument with that. I deliver air ducts to construction sites, and before I get out of the truck, my hard hat goes on. I don't give a rat's behind if it's required or not on that particular site. It's cheaper to replace a hard hat than my head.

Bet it doesn't prevent decapitations from inverteds . . .