Serious accident on Xcelerator caputerd on Video

I have no idea what goes on in New Jersey. 8-)

But consider that the ropes are not the only hazard on those rides. In fact, based on the "after" photos I saw, I'd say the haul ropes were the least of their problems; as I recall, when the Kingda Ka train self-destructed, the haul ropes did not fail. From the look of things, there might have been less damage if they had.

Please note also that there is a good possibility that this was an incident for which there is no modification that will fully mitigate the hazard. Sometimes, stuff happens and it's that simple.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Lord Gonchar said:

DejaVuNitro said:
I can see it now. The sign in line for Intamin Rockets at CF parks:

"Occasionally, a launch cable will snap. You should not be concerned; the train will lauch through the shards causing lacerations and will roll back to the launch position dislodging your seat. This is normal."

I know you're being facetious, but yeah, pretty much.

What!? I think I understand your point that CF knows that this type of incident isn't going to cut someone in half, but this can't possibly be an acceptable risk for the chain. Heck, the 2 riders injured might sue on the grounds that CF knew of the issue (the 2004 incident) and didn't fix it. These are the same folks who turned the Racer back to forwards after 20+ years of safe operations for safety reasons.

I don't think that it was mentioned here, but according to Screamscape, the boys leg was more than likely injured because of the seat coming loose.

...Or did I miss something and we already talked about that?

Does anyone know of any other cable snapping incidents not on an Intamin?

For instance, on an S&S drop/shot tower, shuttle loop, or sky coaster?

And no, I'm not talking about Flyers ;)

Willh51 said:
I remember hearing someone give a reason for closing the original KK queue that was basically the park didn't want what amounted to like 4-hours of people lined up in a queue if the ride broke down.

Now that doesn't seem to make much sense since the last time I was there, they let people line up through the Golden Kingdom.

Regardless, I can see why they might not want that many people locked into cattle pens. I feel like that way people were more likely to wait in line and be disappointed.

Is that the real reason? Whose to say.

I believe that SFGadv closed the original queue that went underneath the launch track because the accident that sent metal shards flying everywhere. Guess they were worried about it happening again and injuring people. It's a shame I really liked the orignal queue. It was niceley themed and provided lots of shade and fans. The new queue is like a half assed attempt at one.

In today's article, the lawyer says the cable "sliced" through the front of the car and then the boy's left calf. I suppose that explains where the debris came from.

If that is indeed what happened (and this hasn't been proven yet), I find it hard to believe that such a result was the intended engineering solution for a cable failure of this kind. If it sliced all the way through the fiberglass body of the car and into the kid's leg, it could very easily have gone the rest of the way, causing a Lassiter-like amputation.

Sorry if I'm reopening a debate that most have been willing to let die since yesterday, but unless I read wrong in these last few days of posts in regards to taking a risk when riding an amusement ride, the issue still hasn't been resolved. Taking a risk on a roller coaster or other thrill ride is whiplash or other injury due to the FORCES OF THE RIDE. That's why they post intensity ratings and warnings about guests with pre-existing conditions to ride AT THEIR OWN RISK. The other risk riders take is something beyond the park's control like burns from a hot seat that's been sitting in the sun all day. Having the sign posted in the queue is the park's liability waiver saying "this ride is a THRILL ride, there is some potential of YOUR body experiencing adverse effects if you take a RISK and decide to ride." NOBODY expects to be hit by shrapnel from a shredded cable and pieces of the compromised fiberglass body of the ride when they get on Xcelerator or Dragster. Ride safety and maintenance of that safety is different than "We warned you that Mean Streak was rough."

StLCPfan said:
NOBODY expects to be hit by shrapnel from a shredded cable and pieces of the compromised fiberglass body of the ride when they get on Xcelerator or Dragster.

I don't expect it, but I understand it can happen and that's the chance I (or anyone) takes when they ride.

Face it, amusement rides are ridiculously safe, but they're still not 100% - nothing is. We read about the handful of incidents each year and the varying degrees of severity of those incidents. Someone is going to be in that seat when these rare instances occur. That is the risk you incur by riding.

It's not a 100% guarantee of safety and it's laughable to expect it to be.

That's what I'm getting at with my comments about risk.

On the subject of this incident in particular (the other half of the discussion), I still think it's a minor incident in the big picture and the anticipation of incidents and design choices made in that line of thought may very well have prevented greater injury. The snapping cable only caused lacerations (we've seen much more extreme results of snapping cables) and the seat that appears to twist or move or whatever, held secure in the face of a ride failure and held the rider secure.

Maybe I'm looking at the glass as half full, but while it's easy to see where the ride failed, you also have to look at how the ride worked.

Combine the two aspects (risk of riding and the details of this incident) and I come to the same conclusion as RideMan:

RideMan said:
Please note also that there is a good possibility that this was an incident for which there is no modification that will fully mitigate the hazard. Sometimes, stuff happens and it's that simple.

Sometimes stuff happens and it's no more complicated than that.

I'd hope that after the incident is investigated that ways to make the ride even safer in the face of new knowledge of potential failure are considered and implemented if necessary.

There's a difference between stuff happening and a DEFECTIVE component of a ride due to either wear and maintenance being lax and not detecting it or manufacturing error.

And even if this was an unavoidable freak accident, it isn't part of the expected risk with riding an amusement park ride.

I agree that perfection is impossible, and I don't expect it personally. But (a) this is pretty far from perfection, especially if the seat really did move and (b) Intamin sure seems to have more than their fair share of such "not quite perfect" incidents.

Even now, in the cold light of day, I do not plan to ride any of the rockets until DOSH is done with its investigation.

StLCPfan said:
There's a difference between stuff happening and a DEFECTIVE component of a ride due to either wear and maintenance being lax and not detecting it or manufacturing error.

Agreed, but at this point there's no reason to think that's the case.

And even if this was an unavoidable freak accident, it isn't part of the expected risk with riding an amusement park ride.

So unavoidable freak accidents should be prevented?

Read that back to yourself again. :)

Brian Noble said:
I agree that perfection is impossible, and I don't expect it personally. But (a) this is pretty far from perfection, especially if the seat really did move and (b) Intamin sure seems to have more than their fair share of such "not quite perfect" incidents.

a. But how do we know it's not perfection under the circumstances of this incident?

b. Yeah, it's certainly cause for consideration.

Even now, in the cold light of day, I do not plan to ride any of the rockets until DOSH is done with its investigation.

I'd ride Xcelerator tomorrow if they'd string a new cable and let me.

What if the seat is designed to move? As in, bend, but not break, as Gonch (and others) have pointed out?

That's not a defect. Imagine if the seat didn't move, and instead transferred the forces directly to the kid? Its not unreasonable to assume he'd have some additional, perhaps more severe injuries.

But there's a difference between the cable snapping and the cable snapping and cutting someone's feet off. SAFETY is the goal, not prevention of accidents completely. Sorry, my edit of my previous post should have included this statement. I realize accidents are SOMETIMES completely unforseeable, but the injury to guests can be minimized if manufacturers look at these possible scenarios when designing the ride's systems. Perhaps what happened on Xcelerator was something they never envisioned happening.

What if the seat is designed to move? As in, bend, but not break, as Gonch (and others) have pointed out?

Maybe, but from my armchair mechanical engineering seat, it doesn't feel that way. The seat movement happens when the train itself was moving relatively slowly, so forces were relatively modest. It moved independently of the restraint and the car---and under a more forceful situation, would have moved farther. The movement appears to have been primarily rotational, not linear---so, not very effective at distributing force.

I understand the principle---crush zones on cars, the bumpers on these trains---but the visual evidence doesn't support the theory for me.

But how do we know it's not perfection under the circumstances of this incident?

See above. It just feels wrong---especially the rotation part.

Edited to add: in full disclosure, despite being on the faculty of an engineering college, I have no particular expertise here.

Edited one more time: the other thing that is disturbing is that the forces were very localized on that seat---no one else walked away with anything other than back pain. That seems to be a pretty low threshhold for an intentional break-away, unless somehow the forces really were point-on.

There may be a perfectly good explanation for all of this. If there is, it will be in the DOSH report. And, that's what I'm waiting for.

Okay, after a little more thought, I have a theory on the seat---assuming it actually moved the way it appears to in that video.

Cable snaps. Portion enters the ride vehicle, slashing kid's leg. A leg isn't going to stop that cable, and it may have continued through the car to weaken one (or maybe more) of the supports connecting the seat to the base of the train. Then, the relatively minor force of impact at the end finished the job on that support, allowing the seat to rotate.

This fits quite a bit of the evidence nicely---after all, your leg is sitting right next to one of those support structures.

Ultimately, for me, the design failure is not the cable snap itself. It's that the cable made its way into the ride vehicle---and I'm still not sure how that happened given the way the cable runs are mostly enclosed (assuming Xcelerator and Dragster have the same cable run layout.)

So what your saying is that it only slashed the kids leg, but had enough force to compromise the seat?

Sure. If he's only got a gash, it means the cable only nicked him. If the cable hit him full on, he's missing a foot. In a steel-cable-snapping-under-tension vs. human-leg-meat-and-bone cage match, the cable is going to win every single time.

Edited for graphic effect. ;)

(Edited one more time to point out that I don't think we *know* the cable actually entered the ride vehicle, nor that that's what caused the injury. It could have been fiberglass from the train, etc. I'm still in hypotehtical land.)

It's a pretty serious gash if the hospital made him stay for 2 nights.

A couple of important points have come up here...I'd like to once again do a bit of a "reset" with regard to what we know versus what we don't know.

o We know that the haul rope failed.
o We know that as a result of that failure, a cloud of shrapnel was launched skyward.
o We NOW KNOW that as a result of that failure, the Fiberglas nose of the train was compromised. We were able to assume that before as the debris appears in the video as the train climbs the tower; we now have verification of that fact.
o We know that through some as-yet-unidentified means, a "boy", presumably the young man seated in the right-hand seat in the now-famous video, received lacerations to his leg and calf which were severe enough to warrant two nights in a hospital.
o We know that an unidentified "man", presumably the gentleman seated in the left-hand seat in the video, complained of "back pain" after the ride.

* Note that the victims have NOT been positively identified as the people visible in the video. We have been assuming that the video was taken from the front-seat camera and that those people are the ones who were injured. Circumstantial evidence suggests this to be the case, but we have no verification of these alleged facts *

* We do NOT know the mechanisms of injury for either injured passenger. There is a good chance that if the left-hand passenger was the one complaining of back pain that it might have resulted from a strain caused by leaning over to investigate the source of the injury to the other passenger.

* We do NOT know the severity of the injury to the right-hand passenger. We know that he spent two nights in the hospital, but it seems possible to me that this might not have been because of the severity of the injury, but because of the mechanism of injury and a desire on the part of his physician to be absolutely certain there was no infection present in the wound.

o We know that the ride has received regular inspections. We know that the park had inspected the haul rope on the morning of the incident as is normal for that ride. We know that the ride was equipped with the manufacturer-specified part.

* We do not know the mechanism of failure.

So what did I miss? :) Oh, the seat. We don't know for certain what happened with the seat. I suggest that unless it was the mechanism of laceration, it doesn't matter, although at this point it would be interesting to find out what, if anything, was going on there.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.