Rider responsibility bill making its way through South Carolina House

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There has been no evidence -- nor even any allegations -- that Mr. Mordarsky's "mess of problems" had anything to do with his death. The DPS report made reference to the fact that he didn't tell the ride operators of his (rather obvious) disability, but it made no effort to connect that failure, or his disability, to being thrown from the ride. Are you aware of some evidence to the contrary?

Torgo:

I have collected reports of fatalities from numerous sources, often several for a single incident. These include CPSC reports, newspaper accounts, reports of emergency room physicians, state accident reports, and various web sites. I have then exercised my judgement based on the evidence to determine the primay cause. I have a fair amount of experience doing root cause analysis of industrial accidents.

Often the primary cause is simple. "Rider jumped out of boat and tried to jump into the following boat," makes the cause pretty obvious. So does, "car fell off ride due to broken bolt which was undersized and of the wrong type." In some cases the primary cause is not so simple when several factors come together to cause an accident. Did the operator miss a dangerous situation because he was negligent, or was it because the design of the ride was such that he couldn't see the dangerous situation?

*** This post was edited by Jim Fisher 2/1/2005 9:33:06 PM ***

One thing I want to toss up is that I feel that at no time should a rider EVER be expected to hold on to be able to be safely restrained in the ride. What if for any reason at all the rider were to fall unconsious? No ride's safety should be contingent on the rider having to hold on to keep from being ejected from the ride. I'm all for riders having to take responsibility for thier own actions, and if they do disobey posted warnings that they did not take the time to read, and ignore verbal warnings by the operators and are later injured, it's their own fault.

Now of course if they did follow all the rules and got hurt due to negligence on the park side, then yes, sue away.

-Ride_Op

There's only so much you can idiot-proof without offending people (see the numerous OTSR discussions on rides like Stormrunner, Kingda Ka, and others).

While I agree that the safety should not be contingent on such actions, I think that in many instances of injury/death it could be avoided/lessened if the rider held on, or otherwise behaved in a responsible manner.

EDIT: forgot the word 'not'*** This post was edited by dannerman 2/3/2005 3:57:08 AM ***