Flying coaster at Prater strikes crane hoist, causes injuries

"Steered into the crane's hoist?" Sounds like the coaster was following an unpredictable path, LOL. Much like (P)KI's suspended incident - the coaster train follows the rails, if there's anything near those rails, it's possible it'll be hit.

I guess the weird thing is "the employee operating the rollercoaster was unaware the worker was busy on the scaffolding when he started up the ride." Doesn't matter whther there was a worker there or not (not discounting his apparently quite-serious head injury here) - there's an obstruction that prevents the coaster from safely completing the circuit. Do NOT operate during lockout/tagout...

The official accident report says the employee operating the rollercoaster was unaware the worker was busy on the scaffolding when he started up the ride. Newspapers, however, report that the attraction has been in operation many times while the painters were busy.

The article doesn't specify--was the coaster actually being painted? While in operation? That seems moronic to me.

^I tend to think (knowing very LITTLE about Prater other than pics) that the attractions are quite "crammed in" there. It's likely they were painting a nearby ride....but I'm still unclear how you dispatch a train full of passengers without running even a single test-run beforehand...

Other than the minature railway and the Riesenrad the attractions and rides are booked in , pretty much a permanent carnival. And yes my understanding they're packed in.

The worst thing to me is that they imply the coaster didn't even do a test run before being loaded with passengers.

Seems like there were several instances of human error. Ridiculous.

Having ridden this particular coaster, I'm not sure whether I'd notice the difference if the train collided with a stationary object. I can't imagine it'd have a drastic effect on the comfort level.

Vater said:
Seems like there were several instances of human error. Ridiculous.

The first being that someone got on a Volare voluntairly.

Is it possible the painter moved his crane into the path of the coaster while it was in operation? Perhaps it was a slow day, or there was only one car on the track, resulting in a significant amount of time between dispatches, making it appear that the ride was not in operation. Just throwing that out there before we blame the operator for not making test runs.

Don't you sort of have to plan how you're going to manage this painting project, especially if things are packed tightly together? It was a Thursday in October. Couldn't they just tell whichever vonTrapp that's operating the ride to stay home because the ride will be closed for a few days? How much business could they lose? Especially compared to how much they'll lose now because of the accident.

The "von Trapp" owns the ride himself and pays the painter. So being a "carny" he probably didn´t want to lose any business while "investing" in the ride.

And yes: The accident happened while the painter was busy painting the coaster and not an adjecent ride. Apparently the work was going on for days.

It´s really quite scandalous and stupid.