Girl who lost feet on Kentucky Kingdom ride takes first steps

I don't really think it's that simple. If there is a possibility of a cable snapping and injuring a passenger on the ride, the snapping of the cable should be planned for. As someone on here said, the cables on these rides are put in fluctuating stages of tension on a regular basis. This fluctuating tension adds to the likelihood that the cables will snap. Especially on a ride where the occupants are exposed to the cables (no cars surrounding them), the snapping of that cable should be expected, and thus controlled.

I was under the impression the cables were inside the tower for this specific reason. I didn't realize all of the cables were on the outside. I'm willing to bet there will be a change in the ride design in the future to prevent something like this from happening again. For that matter, I bet exposed cables in general are going to start being an issue.

Your argument is typical of every argument you make. You always look for the exception and therefore make it so.

Besides, you're responding to someone who is intimately familiar with this type of ride. I'll take his word for it.

I guess that's why I have the job I do and you have the job you do. When you design buildings or attractions for living beings, you have a responsibility to protect them. If you don't take into account all possibilities, people get injured and/or die.

It doesn't matter how "imtimately familiar" you are with a current ride. The simple fact remains that there are exposed cables that can break and injure unprotected occupants. For the designs of the ride, I would say they are ethically bound to alter that design so it can't happen again - no matter how unlikely.

Whatever dude. You don't maintain those rides.

@halltd - If your feeling is that a designer should be "ethically bound to alter that design so it can't happen again," we would have no cars, trains, planes, or just about anything. Heck, I've seen buildings that collapsed. What happens if a tornado comes through? We know that isn't likely, but should that mean that every home must be built to withstand a tornado?

Your reasoning, while noble, is wrong. Isn't it the Cedar Point maps that say that 'there is a risk to riding amusement park rides'? I don't remember if the Six Flags one say that too (or if I'm confused and none of them do), but the fact is there is a risk in everything that you do, and designing any system to account for every possible risk is simply not possible.

The Intamin freefall design is exceptionally safe, and had everything that you could reasonably ask a designer to do to account for safety. And no, you can't un-expose the cables like you suggest -- it can't lift you then.

Like I've said a couple times in this post. The blame for this one isn't on Intamin. It may or may not be on Six Flags, but I really doubt it. It may be the cable had a manufacturing flaw, but that is hard to blame on the cable company unless they knew about it and refused to change their manufacturing ways. In the end, everyone loses, and as Intamin Fan correctly said, ultimately there is a hospital that wants to get paid for the work that they did.

Unlike every other recent ride accident that I can think of, this one could be blameless -- although I agree that the girl should receive something, without either Six Flags being negligent or the cable manufacturer knowing of the issues, I don't know who should give it to her.

You could easily run the cables up the center of the tower and somehow have hooks in tracks running the catch car up the tower.

Chuck