Major Accident at Tivoli Friheden

Cobra, the Ridetek inverted coaster, lost a car on Friday night.

http://ekstrabladet.dk/112/article1029728.ece (in Danish)

wish I had an english version. It's a bad year for coaster accidents world wide. *** Edited 7/5/2008 10:47:29 AM UTC by Hopman***

Here's the rough translation, courtesy of Google:

"A car fell tonight from Cobra in Tivoli Freedom in Aarhus, informs Aarhus Fire. Four people - two men and two women - have come to harm.

The injuries are, according to the latest reports, stabilized, but we do not know what condition they are in, and how the circumstances surrounding the accident have been, said vagtchefen at Aarhus Fire around midnight.

A large police force segregated subsequent area around rutsjebanen.

The only thing that counts for us right now, it is, to get people out of the area and ran the injured in hospital. How and why the accident could happen is the question that has just come in the second set, says the vagtchef in Østjyllands Police.

Shortly before 01.00 at night to Saturday police had formed a better overview of the number of injured and extent of their injuries.

Three persons are brought to traumecentret and one further brought to skadestuen with what the hospital described as a 'surgical damage', informs Østjyllands Police.

The first reports were of damage such as broken limbs, etc. But it was as I said the first reports, says the watch.

The injured are two men on 23 and 24 years from the Aarhus area and two women on 22 and 23 years from the Norfolk area.

The police can not disclose the circumstances behind the accident.

Some shocked guests attended, according to the police the accident, and they are offered Crisis.

Tivoli liberty officer announced at midnight that 'no comment Monday, at the moment'."

For anybody who didn't know, like me, Cobra is a family-style inverted. That's my way of explaining it based on the park placing it as a family ride on their site, and that unlike many inverts it only has two inversions, (a cobra roll & immelman).

What surprised me the most is that the site says it's opening date was just last week 6/27/08. Whether that is the actual opening date, or that was the expected opening date, I don't know.

http://en.friheden.dk/rides/family/cobra/

It sounds to me like somebody forgot to toque a couple of bolts.

Hopefully the injured folks are going to be okay...

Here's a vid of this ride - including on-ride footage

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__U515Vdffg

What a horrible accident.
Thoughts and prayers are with them.

Article 1 This is the English-translated article that was provided above, but there are now links to updated stories on the side.

"rutsjebanen was just repaired" and "knaekket axle triggered rutsjebane-collapse"

Posted on the park website:COBRA
Preliminary idle due to accident

Last night - Friday - shortly before the close of business at 23.00 there was a serious accident with the parks new roller coaster - Cobra. The front part of the train, where 2 passengers were sitting, fell from the other vehicle and down on the pavement. In total, 4 people injured in the accident. The passengers have injuries and fractures and information from authorities is that no one will have lasting physical injury after the accident.

The cause of the accident is not yet established - Technological Institute in cooperation with the police and Tivoli Frehedens technicians are immediately working to find out the reason for the deeply unfortunate incident.

It is clear however, that there was a mechanical problem and not a human error.

Cobra is now closed and it is unclear what to do with the track in the future.

Tivoli Frehedens is open as usual to the public

There's a photo in the below article...very scary...

http://jp.dk/indland/aar/article1385303.ece

From the picture in the link above it looks like the car just broke off.

Very sad! Hope the people injuiried recover!

On anther note this looks like a fun little coaster. Are there any others out there?

Here's an English article.

Even worse in that the coaster just opened last week. (6/27) That ain't good.

You mean the first and only ride built by a company whose website was so bad we thought it was fake has a major accident in its first week of operation? Say it ain't so.

And this is by no means a bad year for coaster accidents. Every year, around the time of the second or third accident, someone always says, "This is a bad year for coaster accidents." There are always a handful of accidents each year. Let's just hope these riders come out of this one OK.

True. Well, at least it wasn't because of their own stupidity ala SFoG.

Yep, instead it was the stupidity of the manufacturers.

Hopman, what does this incident have to do with the SFoG incident other than your comment making you look to be scoring brownie points?

Well, they're both accidents involing inverted coasters! That's what they have in common. Both were caused by human error too.

So the US incident is stupidity but the Danish incident is human error?

How so?

Stupidity IS human error! The kid made an error in judgement to jump the fences and the person who tightend the bolt didn't get them tight enough.

okey doke, all the best :)

Having just taken a quick peek at the manufacturer's website I'm sure there are worse out there.

Isn't Ride-Tek the post bankruptcy name for Giovanola? Seems to me I remember that being the case.

And does anyone remember the Arrow Dynamics website from a few years ago? Talk about a disaster of a site!!