Report expected today in Six Flags New England death

Wasn't he sitting in the last row of the train? Was your friend turned around the whole ride?

he was sitting in the third seat I'm pretty sure. It was pretty close to the front and I'm positive it wasn't the last row. There was only one seat empty when the train came back. The "eyewitness" reports on the news from people in the park were wrong. This I am sure of. I know what I saw.. and he had been sitting very close to the front

Crashmando the lap belts were added to both SFA's & SFNE's versions of the coaster when the ride vehicles were manufactured & delivered to the park before the rides even had their first post construction test runs.

Both coasters were added to their respective parks the year after SFDL's was built & that was the same year that SFDL's superman threw that one rider when coming into the brakes because it didn't have lap belts when it was built.

I also have signed up just to post my comments on this topic...

In this particular situation we don't know if it was mechanical faluire or not (so far), but I don't think that should stop us from looking at the saftey and mechanical function of intamin rollercoasters.

Don't get me wrong, I am a long time coaster enthusiast, and I personally love Top Thrill Dragster and Mellenium Force (both intamin), but so far they are also the only coasters to contiually dissapoint me. I have sat through so many hours and hours of breakdowns on these two rides. Sure, it was well worth it, but fact is they can't consitantly run day after day... Its like every three days its hit or miss. And sometimes even months at a time.

We all know that new rides breakdown, I remember Magnum XL 200 when it opened, and Mean Streak and Wicked Twister were just as bad when they opened, but for the most part in the next year or so they operate a lot better. It just makes me wonder if intamin needs to look at these issuses. I have even tried to talk to the Higher offices at CP about these constant breakdowns. One time on the platform on MF I asked about a 3 hour breakdown that was happening infront of my eyes, and they wouldn't even respond. I looked the man right in the eye and he just looked away. To me that said there is a problem here. It won't stop me from riding them, but it just makes me wonder

Referring to the video linked above, don't you just love the engineering professor giving his "expert" opinion. It sounded to me like he knew nothing about coasters, so looked up the physics of coasters in Google and just added things like "kinetic acceleration" to make him sound like an engineer - he wasn't even answering the questions. Not to mention they seemingly don't need to check the bolts to expect the rides, they just need an accelerometer and nothing will possibly go wrong. :)

Some Info that was just sent to me:

From Ride Accident Reports:

>>>Police: Victim fell from front seat
(Saturday, May 1, 2004) - A 55-year-old man suffered fatal injuries when he fell from the Superman Ride of Steel roller coaster at Six Flags New England theme park in Agawam, Massachusetts. The man, a Six Flags season pass holder and park enthusiast, was seated in the front seat of the train's lead car, next to another passenger. He fell from the train at the final curve of the ride which leads to the brakes. His body spun through the air and struck a fence before it came to rest on the ground.
The ride was immediately shut down. It passed a state inspection last month and a park inspection on Saturday morning. Agawam Police, the Massachusetts Department of Public Safety and Six Flags are investigating.

The victim's mother told the Hartford Courant that her son suffered from cerebral palsy, and that she believes he was "so sickly and handicapped" that she couldn't believe he was allowed to board the ride. The Americans With Disabilities Act prohibits parks from preventing disabled people to board amusement rides unless it can be shown that it would pose a direct threat to themselves or others.

Six Flags says that in order for someone to board Superman Ride of Steel, his or her height and weight must fall within the manufacturer's design specifications, and that riders must be able to board the ride without the assistance of park personnel. In this case, the victim's height of 5 feet 3 inches and weight of 225 pounds were within the ride's design specifications and the victim boarded the ride on his own.

Superman Ride of Steel was manufactured by Intamin AG of Switzerland. It is the top-rated roller coaster in the world.

Makes me wonder...

I do not think anything is on the Teknos mind other than this was not your typical CP victim. Fact is, the Ride accident Reports site which I read also, has this totally different facts of what happpened. The vistim was front seat, not back seat, he was able to load himself into the train, dang does not seem so incapacitated as reported by his mom.

What is bad is the enthusiast label. Until we grow up as people, or we lose all of the idiots in enthusiast land through attrition from killing themselves, we will not gain any respect from anyone soon, and we are talking about Media as well a parks.

Ed

Do they use a system to measure the gap between the restraint and the side of the seat on the train, I believe the SROS rides have a seatbelt but I am not sure. On Titan at SFOT, we have a 3'' x 3'' cube that we insert between the seat and restraint if the gap appears to be that large. If the block fits in, the restraint must go down until the block will no longer fit.

Also, on most rides at SFOT the restraint must click at least three times or a person may not be allowed to ride. If a rider can't get the restraint down at least three clicks, we can not assist them on pushing down harder. If they can't do it themselves, they cannot be allowed to ride so not to exert more force on the lap bar (and to protect the rider from being painfully stapled) than would usually be exerted at x amout of clicks.

I don't know if any of that made sense.

Interesting information about where he was sitting, but it doesn't make sense why there are so many accounts of him being in the back of the coaster. Also, if he were really not strapped in for the entire ride, he would have had to have done that to himself. He would have known that the belt and lapbar wasn't down prior to leaving, and if he had wanted to put it on, he could of on the lift hill. Superman has plenty of handles, both in front of you, and to the sides of the seats, so he wouldn't have to look too hard to find a grip.

In response to cp2kforce27, I understand why you might think that, but my point is not that people ride loose (this is common occurance believe me), but that even in a loose setting, you can't get out of the car unless the seatbelt is undone at a minimum. Again, I am not talking about taking any restraint off, or disabling anything, just an inch of lap clearance. The belts on superman aren't long enough that they could be loose for most people. In fact, it is common occurance that larger people are relocated to sit in the odd rows (front rows of the nine slightly tiered 2 row cars), because the belts on the lower front seats origininate from the same level as the rear belts, so there is more slightly more slack in the front. I would also comment that in all my riding superman, not once has my belt or lapbar not been checked, so for someone to skip over a rider would be highly unlikely, not to mention that the left side of the train, the side the man was sitting on, is also observed by the operator on dispatch.

>>Superman Ride of Steel was manufactured by Intamin AG of Switzerland. It is the top-rated roller coaster in the world.<<

I'd say its probably the top rated intamin hypercoaster at Six Flags NE worldwide!

(Anyone remembering EGF ?)

:)

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Makes me wonder how safe EGF is in the end.

Xander I experienced a similar situation on SFA's Mind Eraser over the weekend.

When trying to load into the train the harness wouldn't lock tightly but unlike at SFOT the ops tried to tighten it & it still wouldn't lock saying that my stomach being in the way prevented it from going down when that wasn't the case at all because I had already ridden Two face earlier in the day which has the same restraints & seat design & it locked tightly.

The problem was in the restraint itself simply because there weren't any more ratchets for it to lock into so it would stay tight....not because I was too big for the seat so I just got off the ride & waited by the exit for my friend who was able to ride.

Going back to Superman's possible design flaws: even if the bar failed & the belt was still fastened we're forgetting one thing....since the belt is able to adjust to varying sized riders the man's weight would've caused enough slack in the belt so as to allow him to slip right out of it & it's also very difficult to hold onto anything if a restraint does fail due to the forces generated by the ride.

This is something I know a little bit about because two years ago I had my restraint pop open on Mind Eraser & had to hold onto the sides of the seat for the whole ride which was by no means an easy thing to do with all the rapid acceleration,directional changes & speed generated by the ride...just try it yourself sometime & you'll soon see just how hard it is to do.

SFNE FANATIC he was actually seated on the right side of the train.. After reading a lot of news reports and things that people believe on here, I don't know where people keep getting all of this false information. I know that the police were taking witness statements afterwards, so this must be where the "eyewitness" reports came from, but believe me a lot of them are wrong

No way! You must have seen the wrong seat because in order for him to fly out on the last corner from the right seat, he would have had to have not only come out of his restraints, but also go through the rider next to him. I don't buy that. He was in a scooter, which meant he came to the station the back way, which would have had him boarding the train from the left. This thing is implausable enough, but for him to fall out over the rider/restraints next to him is crazy.

In response to BatwingFan SFA, the intamin rides use a hydraulic T-Bar, which is infinitely adjustable, and uses two redundant systems to prevent failure. The belts are adjustable, but they do not get very large (ie. there is not a lot of slack in the design. I don't think a man 225 pounds could get out of it without releasing it, the seats are too upright, molded, and restricting. Hanging on for a ride on Mind Eraser must have sucked. Did the shoulder restraints let go? What about the safety belt holding the restraints down? I am not a fan of vekoma rides, especially the mind eraser. What a pounding it gives you (assuming its like the SFNE mind erasor)!

well all I can say is that I know what I saw, and of course I'm not a professional investigator. I'm still waiting like the rest of you to hear the reports and find out what actually happend. I'm just saying, don't trust anything you hear on the news or from their so called eyewitness reports on the accident.

The only thing holding it anywhere near down was the belt...when I first got on the ride the restraint was nice & tight but as the train got near the top of the lift it just popped open & the belt was the only thing holding it down.

I guess the only things keeping me on the ride was my tight grip on the sides of the seat(the little ring type things) & just plain luck as well as the "horn" or whatever that thing is called on the front of the seat.

It was truly the most frightening ride I've ever taken on a coaster which is why I didn't ride again until this year...so far I've only had one ride back on opening day because when I tried to ride on saturday the thing wasn't locking tight enough & if it doesn't lock tightly then I'm sure as hell not going to ride which is why I always ask the op's on both Two face & ME to make sure it's as tight as it can possibly be so what happened in 02 won't happen again.

Batwing Fan,

My Girlfriend and I had a similar experience on Mind Eraser. During our ride, My harness became much looser than I originally made it, making me very uncomfortable. I then noticed my Girlfriend screaming more than usual, looked next to me, and she looked terrifed. When we got off, she said the same thing as you, that the belt was the only thing keeping the restraint closed. I have not gone on a Vekoma ride since.

I have ridden S:ROS MANY times since 2001 and have always felt very secure on the ride, albeit WITH that lapbar properly secured. On one ride in 2003 the seatbelt came undone during the ride (I didn't notice it until I was in the brakes), and the lapbar still kept me solidly in place - I *did* wonder why I was getting such insane airtime on that run, though..!. I should add that this was the ONLY time I have ever had the experience of the seatbelt coming loose on its own on this ride, but it does make you wonder if maybe they couldn't redesign the belts so that there is no way for it to loosen involuntarily once locked??

In the case of this incident, if the seatbelt were not properly fastened around the rider, and if the lapbar were secured at much too high a position, I can easily see how one might get ejected from the train; however, it's still a puzzlement to me as to why it happened on the last turn into the brakes and not back on top of one of those massive-airtime hills earlier in the course of the ride??

I do hope they can find an equitable solution for the ride, without somehow permanently altering its fundamental design. I think I would rather see it dismantled and moved to another state than to witness the bastardization of such a masterpiece by Ed Markey's minions...

Coasterfan4life: which park did this incident you just described on Mind Eraser happen at & in what row/seat/train were you in at the time?

If memory serves me correctly, it was at SFA, and we were 2nd or 3rd row...Not sure about what train, didnt really want to examine too much, just wanted to get the hell away from there!!!

So that makes two seperate riders at the same location that have had restraint problems on the park's SLC.

I think it's high time SFA just gets rid of that accident waiting to happen before someone does end up getting thrown from it.....you can easily tell that it gets the least amount of maintenance of any of the coasters in the park,I mean loook at how bad the paintjob is.

That alone should send a message on how poorly maintained that ride is when compared to others in the park.