Girl says Dixie Landin' ride restraint had problems days before fatal accident

"He joked with them and told them if the ride flipped over and unlocked that they should just put their hands in the air and that gravity would hold them in place,"

If that's true... Wow. That's seriously messed up.

"According to the coroner, Zeno died of "multiple system trauma."

Wow really? I never would have guessed. </sarcasam>

If this story has any credibility I think Dixie Landin' is absolutely screwed in court. Too early to judge until the report is out but that sounds terrifying.

The ride ops assertion isn't even a true one, which makes it even more stupid. Some coasters obviously could be / are ridden restraint-less, maybe even the Gerstlauer spinners, but the Sohne spinners seem pretty forceful and certainly not something I would want to face with a malfunctioning lapbar.

Mechanical restraint failure is so rare in the industry this will hopefully spur a lot more necessary maintenance across the board at all parks rather than resulting in more seatbelts and unnecessary "fixes."

Scary article.

Sounds to me like the girls in the story were freaking out about their restraints being manually unlocked. "the attendant had to do something special under the seat to try and make it lock on us" sure sounds like a manual unlock to me. Not to belittle the death at all, but this particular instance sounds like a non-story.

That's what I was originaly thinking. But, it doesn't say they did something to ge it to unlock. It says they did something to get it to lock.

Jason Hammond said:That's what I was originaly thinking. But, it doesn't say they did something to ge it to unlock. It says they did something to get it to lock.

That being said, I wonder if they needed to "unlock" it before they could "lock it". I'm thinking of the buzz bars on older coasters. It's been too long since I was at Waldameer to remember how this style coaster locks...