Coney Island accident

I'm pretty befuddled at the moment.

Yesterday I visited Coney Island, where 95% of the rides were closed due to the lousy weather. While I was standing in front of the Schwarzkopf Jumbo Jet loading platform admiring the coaster, a guy came up to me and told me about an accident that occurred last Sunday in which a car derailed and injured the three people riding. He even pointed out the suspect vehicle laying on the ground in the middle of the coaster with a tarp over it, but it was hard to verify if it was in fact a coaster car while staring through rain, fog, and supports (and a blue tarp, of course). I generally take news like this (especially from complete strangers) with a big slab of salt, but something about the way he described it aroused within me quite a bit of curiosity. Also, I hadn't even noticed that there were no other cars on the track until I thought about it later.

I looked it up on the net when I got home last night, and I came up emptyhanded. Finally, I tried a different angle and found one little blurb about it that was posted by a parkgoer on a bulletin board on Coney Island's website the day of the incident. I've since generated a bit more interest with my post last night. You can read the original series of messages here (the first posted by a user named Mike on April 21st):

http://www.coneyisland.com/archive_21.html

The active bulletin board is here:

http://www.coneyisland.com/cgi-bin/bb.cgi

Why on Earth hasn't this incident been all over the news? I repeat, I am quite befuddled...

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-Vater
Coaster Count: 99

*** This post was edited by Vater on 4/29/2002. ***

Vater, I have worked at several parks that have had accidents yet the information doesn't make it to the news. How many times do you hear of accidents at Disney World? Once every couple of years? Do you really think there are no accidents at 4 amusement parks and three water parks in TWO years?

I suspect this is why you have not heard anything about Coney Island.

I suspected that as well, as I am aware of Disney's trend of covering up such incidents. But I think it would be a lot more difficult for Coney to withhold information when the park itself lies on a fairly main thoroughfare through the Southern shore of Brooklyn, and most of the rides are visible from that thoroughfare. It just seems unusually strange to me.

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-Vater
Coaster Count: 99

Maybe because news agencies realize that these minor incidents are routine and don't warrant being blown out of proportion. Personally I'm glad that incidents like that don't get reported. Less for Markey to use to scare the hell out of the uninformed general public.

I still contend that the rides at Coney Island have deteriorated to death traps. The place is hella toe up...you wouldn't catch me dead on them things.

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What's love...it should be about us, it should be about trust!

If someone was in very critical condition, I feel almost certain that the news media would have picked up on it. It's too good a story to pass up on, especially after the feeding frenzy that the media had on even minor incidents on rides last years. (Speaking of feeding frenzies I notice that they have already started to pick up on shark attack stories again this year.)

A Jumbo Jet car sitting in the middle of the ride could be just pulled for maintenance, or it could have had a minor break down. But flying off the track? That would have been on every news show in the country!

Yes accidents happen in amusement parks every day. The list of injuries is going to be large when you have 300 million attendance every year doing anything. The fact that you have so many minor and a some major injuries is precisely why they are not news. They are too ordinary. But a coaster flying off the track is not ordinary and would be big news.

Remember that only one person died in a ride accident at an amusement park last year. Few things in life are that safe. However, an estimated 20 people were killed while driving their cars to and from the park.

*** This post was edited by Jim Fisher on 4/29/2002. ***

Thta coaster has an abundance of unused cars on site. They are used for parts. I am not saying there was or was not an accident, but that is always a mystery of the Bowery.