Text-only version
Politics can make you crazy. So can theme park lawyers. The theme park industry and I have been arguing over public reporting of amusement ride accidents for almost two years now. The California state legislature passed a law 14 months ago that says amusement parks have to report all injuries requiring "medical service beyond ordinary first aid." If a rider is injured seriously enough that the park's first aid station can't diagnose or treat the victim, then the park has to file a report with the state. Simple, huh?
Not if you're a theme park lawyer.
On November 20, at a public hearing on the long-delayed California amusement park regulations, theme park defense attorney Boyd Jensen explained his opposition to the accident reporting statute as follows: "It is important that we remove the politics and headline-grabbing language. The most important aspect of injury reporting is that it be measurable."
Now to me, it's pretty easy to measure the difference between a Band-aid at the park and a visit to the Emergency Room. But that's probably because I'm a mom, not a lawyer. Moms have to make technical evaluations like that on a regular basis. I'm guessing that California's amusement park employees could learn the difference, too -- if they really wanted to.
Let's examine another industry lawyer's comments, submitted in writing to the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH): "Unfortunately, in this industry there are litigious guests who attempt to build a claim by demanding extreme and unnecessary medical attention. To remove [industry-sanction language that restricts reportable injuries] could overload and overburden the [regulatory] program with exaggerated, or even false injury reports."
Now we're getting to the heart of the matter. If you compare injury counts in states that use "beyond first aid" with injury counts from states that use industry-sanctioned definitions, there is a noticeable difference. For instance, Ohio's parks only have to report injuries requiring immediate in-patient admission to a hospital. State regulators received 5 accident reports in 1999. Pennsylvania's parks report any injury requiring medical attention. Their regulators received 347 reports in 1999.
I've talked with Charles Bruckner, who heads up Pennsylvania's regulatory division. He didn't feel overloaded or overburdened by those 347 reports. In fact, Charles believes that collecting and analyzing failure data is pretty much mandatory if he's going to succeed in the job he's been given: monitoring the safety of amusement rides in his state and implementing accident prevention strategies.
That's the point I've been making over and over again, for almost two years now. Accident prevention depends upon careful and unbiased examination of ALL the available safety data. Paying customers are not supposed to be injured on amusement rides. If they are, then the system has failed. Certainly if a patron's injury forces them to seek medical treatment, after having paid several hundred dollars in admittance fees for a day of family fun, then the system has failed.
Safety analysis requires the ability to contrast and combine failure data from the same types of rides operating at different facilities, with a focus on the type of failure, not the medical diagnosis. The extent of injury in an amusement ride accident is largely a matter of luck. A coaster derailment can result in a sprained ankle or a dead body, or anything in between. A child who falls out of a kiddie ride might escape with nothing more than a bruised leg, but could just as easily end up dead or in a coma. All ride-related accidents represent system failures. All accidents should be treated as learning opportunities, whether luck was with the rider or not.
I have no doubt that theme parks encounter guests who file fraudulent injury claims. So do other regulated industries. Some automobile drivers exaggerate their injuries and submit fraudulent claims to insurance carriers, but the state doesn't restrict motor vehicle accident reporting regulations to solve that problem. In any case, DOSH has already addressed the issue of fraud directly in the proposed regulations. Parks are excused from reporting injuries that do not appear to be "reliable and credible".
Theme park defense attorneys have a difficult job. So do plaintiff's attorneys. Lawsuits are an ugly, messy business. But the state shouldn't undermine an accident prevention program just to insulate a politically powerful industry from nuisance lawsuits. I sweated blood to pass AB 850 with the phrase "medical service beyond ordinary first aid", because I know from first-hand experience that hiding ride-related failures from consumers is dangerous.
Like Boyd, I would love to see politics removed from this endless debate, but that's not likely to happen in Disney's home state. Like Boyd, I'd like to see an end to headlines like those that ran in the Los Angeles Times following the Nov. 20 hearing: "Emotional Plea Made for Amusement Park Rules" and "Theme Parks: A Lobbyist Joy Ride". The only way to end those headlines, though is for DOSH to implement the law that was passed 14 months ago -- as it was drafted, not as the theme park industry would like it to read.
For two years now, industry and I have been arguing over accident reporting. I have logic on my side, the bill's author on my side, the press on my side, and public opinion on my side. Yet the state of California has proposed regulations that substitute industry's definition of reportable injury for the definition specified in the law. Politics can make you crazy. So can theme park lawyers.
Note #1: On December 6, 2000, DOSH released a revised draft of their proposed amusement park regulations. In the revised draft, industry's laundry list of reportable injuries has been deleted. Parks are required to report deaths and injuries resulting in "medical service beyond ordinary first aid". Interested parties have until December 22 to submit written comments.
Note #2: On September 5, 2001, DOSH removed the language clarifying the accident reporting criteria and simply transcribed the statutory language into the regulations. DOSH gave no reason for the reversal.
