Report says girl in Playland accident wiggled out of restraint

Posted | Contributed by supermandl

A state Department of Labor investigation into the death of a 7-year-old New Rochelle girl at Playland Amusement Park is expected to confirm that she was killed after she wiggled from under a safety bar and was thrown off the thrill ride.

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Playland Park

Now there is a surprising finding.

"wiggled", huh? How about "climbed"? They make it sound like getting out from under the lap bar was difficult. In truth, that's the easy part. Getting thrown out is the part that takes some work!

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Here is a video from yesterday. On the same news channel today, they interviewed a couple of people who blamed the accident entirely on Playland. It's sad it made it on TV.

Edit- Fixed Link*** This post was edited by NoRulz2k 6/7/2004 7:48:53 PM ***

You would know this...how? (Rideman) :)

Have you ever ridden a Scrambler, RCT_MASTER? The passenger tub is about 22" from the seat cushion to the top of the tub. No active restraints are required on that ride, although the gate is equipped with a drop-down lap bar and is latched with both a spring latch and a pin.

The lap bar does not lock in place. Which, for someone of my size, is a Good Thing™. Getting out from under it doesn't require any wiggling, or in fact any serious effort at all.

Getting thrown out requires some effort. The center of mass for the human body when seated on a Scrambler seat is about 3"-7" above the seat. To get thrown out, the center of mass has to be elevated far enough to clear the sidewall of the seat (22" from the seat cushion). Once elevated that high, getting thrown out goes from "difficult" to "inevitable" as the Scrambler exerts a lateral force of between 2-3 G's.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

As most of you know, I'm not generally an advocate of blaming the victem. However, this case does appear to be a case of gross rider misconduct. As Dave said the standard scramble restraints are perfectly adequate unless the rider makes a signigicant effort to attain an unsafe position.

The only real question here is the age of the unaccompanied rider. I must admit that I'm don't know at what age a rider should be allowed to ride alone on a scrambler.

I beleive the girl was only 7 and she was from new york.

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/news/wabc_052304_ride.html

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