Pigeon Forge Hawk disassembled after fatal accident

"But authorities have said the ride was in motion when the safety strap came undone."

Well, at least it would appear then, that the ride-op is cleared, now the question is why/how the restraint opened...

I have heard some things, chatter to other parks that have Hawk's. The going theory is that the seat in question had some kind of broken part. In order to run the ride anyway, the sensor that checks the seat was bypassed, so the interlock that keeps the ride from running with a restraint failure wasn't doing its job. Parks run rides like this all of the time... but they block off that seat as well. It sounds as if the bypass was done without blocking the seat.

That's partly speculation, based on what some mechanic types have told me.

Well then it sounds to me like this doesn't fully clear the ops or management of any wrong doing.

If there was a broken part making that particular seat on the ride unsafe to occupy then they should've had it blocked off to begin with & the victim in this case should've been assigned to a different seat...or told to wait until the next ride cycle was loading to be re-assigned to said seat.

So that explains why I didn't see it on my way to Dollywood Saturday.