Girls may sue Stratosphere for being stuck on Insanity

Trying not to get too political in my comments, but, the problem is a lack of tort reform; an issue on the Republican platform; but doomed to failure because of the amount of money that the trial lawyers are giving to both sides of the aisle. Trial lawyers are about one thing. Winning and getting a big cut of the settlement. If they don't think they can win, they wont take a case.

Here's how this case will go down. He will claim the girls have some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder and get some shrink to sign off on the whole thing. He could probably shyster any jury into feeling sorry for two teenage girls. The hotel will know this, and unfortunately, settle out of court.

One poster above said that they should have comped the girls and their family after the mishap. I agree to a point, but unless they sign something idemnifying the hotel of any wrong doing, they can still turn around and sue.

UbRhino, you said:

"I just think the ride should have automatically moved back to the platform once it stopped. It should have been designed to do so. If the arm were to snap for ANY reason, there's no way it should be 1,000 feet in the air to begin with. I would just think that having the ride dangling over the edge would be MUCH "riskier" than bringing it back to the tower."

All right, I'll explain this a little more. The reason why a ride -- any ride -- wouldn't return to the station in the case of a trouble light caused for any reason is that it is up to maintenance to determine what the problem is from using the data that the rides computer gives them plus anything else. Having a ride automatically return to the loading position just wouldn't work in every case, and having the riders suspended in the air for 80 minutes or more is a much better alternative to having a one-in-a-million breakdown that causes something to break.

Think about every ride in every park that you have ever seen get stuck. Unless losing power automatically returns it to the load position like with a handful of flat rides, you have the riders in a stuck position.

The best way to illustrate this point is probably Intamin drop towers. What stops them from returning to the ground in the case of a trouble light? We know that they work on magnetic braking, so they should be able to drop from anywhere if there is a problem, right? Well, lets say that on the way up, the ride senses some sort of problem... Upon further inspection, there is some sort of problem within one of the drop tracks that caused the ride to stop. If the car had just automatically been released, on the way down it could've hit this peice before slowing and injure the riders.

In the case of a ride like this, lets say that the trouble light actually went off because one of the sensors that moves the arm out thought that the arm had moved too far. Maybe the sensor had been blown.... but in the off case that the arm moved too far and bringing the ride back in had the potential for the arm to just rip off its joints and strand them there, then you want to see that before you start moving them so that maintence can best deal with it where both the riders and the ride itself aren't greatly damaged.

Sure, it is probably a one in a million chance again that Insanity would have a problem like this (I don't know how it actually operates, so the above was just a hypothesis), but if there is any chance that moving it back could be dangerous, I'd rather it wait out there... even if I was on it. Hell, I didn't want to ride my first Intamin drop tower until I had seen one with a car stuck at the top for over an hour. Guess what -- the park wasn't able to just unload them either... but they got them down as quickly as possible, and everyone was okay.

I've been to parks before where I've seen coasters stuck on the lift or on the brake run or flat rides in the air. The difference is that these rides can be easily unloaded because of their proximity to the ground. The Stratosphere doesn't have that luxury. I'd say that 80 minutes was a fine time to wait. They got back just fine and no one was injured. Rides have been designed with the ultimate in safety in mind for the past 25+ years. I really don't think we should redesign them for conveince in case of a breakdown, and ignore the possibility of that one in a million chance.

And while that one in a million figure sounds like it would never happen, how many people ride things every year? How many deaths a year is an acceptable loss for the industry if they can get people out immediately? I'd say zero, and I hope that parks -- and the Stratosphere -- think the same way I do.

But according to the news articles, it wasn't like the ride alerted failure due to high winds, and then the ride crew went into action using the already planned and practiced procedure. Instead, they had to figure it out first, then try what they thought they could do.

It would seem that the specific ride error condition--even if the root cause was known and the behavior was "as designed", was insufficiently tested.

And while other flat rides do have various shutdown procedures, ranging from stopping in mid air to returning to an upright position and returning to station; however, the ride still remains in the same horizontal and vertical plane as the ride's foundation, and that horizontal and vertical plane is also not in mid-air, 900+ feet above the ground.

Again, the judge can decide the merit of the suit, but it's clear that the ride should be thoroughly retested if only to make sure the ride crews have learned their procedures for each designed ride condition that can occur.

The motivation behind this lawsuit is what is wrong.

So many of you have posted comments that infer that you see a lawsuit as an opportunity to wealth. I guess the American way now since hard work is frowned upon and being successful is considered a crime. (Just look at how our government looks at successful people).

A lawsuit is a crime against society. Few of those filed are truly justified and the payouts are ridiculous.

The facts of this incident are:

1. No one was injured. Scared, yes, but not injured.

2. There was no intention to harm anyone

3. The Stratosphere has no control over the weather.

If they want to sue they should go sue mother nature. We need to pass laws against such lawsuits. These suits only deplete our buying power since the products and services we pay for are more expensive.

This incident IMO was stupid. I understand the need to stop the ride in high winds, but why it must remain in a position hanging out over the edge doesn't make sense. There should be a difference between an E-stop and a sudden shut down due to high winds.

-Eric

---

The facts of this incident are:

1. No one was injured. Scared, yes, but not injured.

2. There was no intention to harm anyone

3. The Stratosphere has no control over the weather.

---

How dare you use common sense in this matter? ;)

I would just reword the opening line to read "The facts of this incident as we know them are:"

And when you put it into that perspective, you'd have to be blind not to see exactly what's wrong with this situation and the system in general.