A Fresh Look at Ride Safety

Imagine, just for a few moments, that we could strip away the biases and battle mentality from the issue of amusement ride safety. Forget what you know -- or think you know -- about patrons, theme park corporations, state ride safety agencies, carnival operators, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Pretend you've never heard of Saferparks or Disney or Congressman Markey or Congressman Stearns. Here's what you do know:

• Amusement providers sell consumers experiences that combine motion, elevation, psychological stimulation, story telling and surprise to trigger excitement and pleasure.
• In some cases, amusement providers cross state borders to engage in commerce (carnivals). In other cases, consumers cross state or national borders to engage in commerce with amusement providers (theme parks).
• Technology evolves rapidly, bringing new experiences and design features to market each year, yet amusement rides also have an extremely long operational life (50 years or more). Resale market is strong.
• The wide variety of machinery, types of motion, and special effects introduce potential health and safety risks to child and adult patrons.

Any time you mix heights, speed, or machinery with humans, you have risk of accidental injury. Risk combines probability that a harmful event will occur with the severity of that harm. With 300 million humans interacting with amusement park rides every year, injuries are a given. The risk multiplies for children because they are small and young, and children represent a major market for this industry. Safety, then, is a large underlying concern for everyone involved in the commercial transaction.

Various layers of private and public safety oversight exist, but no single person or organization is responsible for ensuring that all the safety bases are adequately covered for consumers at all commercial venues. That's what we've been arguing over since 1999. Congressman Markey's bill would expand the Consumer Product Safety Commission's jurisdiction to cover all amusement rides, not just those operated by traveling carnivals. The park industry believes that things are working just fine without a top-down regulatory viewpoint.

Maybe things are working just fine as they are, maybe they're not. But without a top-down regulatory viewpoint, Congress and consumers have nothing but special interest opinion by which to judge the situation. Saferparks sees a few serious holes in the current system; the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions doesn't see any. That sums up the last eight years of national debate on this subject. Maybe it's time to think outside that tired old box.

If you were trying to sort out a situation like this in the business world, you might appoint a person or small task group to study the various pieces and layers, find out how they fit together and where the gaps are. Here's how you might start:

• Find out -- from neutral sources -- what kinds of accidents and injuries occur on thrill rides. Researching that question will bring insight into data collection practices. Is there an adequate, independent system for collecting and studying failure data? Do the accident records point out areas that need additional attention?
• Talk individually with representatives from a sampling of amusement parks, carnivals, insurance companies, manufacturers, and regulatory agencies. Ask each one to explain what they do to prevent accidents and injuries, and how they do it. Ask each one to list three things they think are working well and three things that aren't. Listen carefully. Pull all the findings together. Compare and contrast.
• Repeat the last step with accident victims, ride enthusiast groups, parent groups, and other consumer groups. Are consumer expectations about injury risk and industry expectations about injury risk in agreement?
• Study current safety standards and state/local regulations. Do they form an effective, enforceable, coherent set of safety checks and balances for U.S. rides? Are there gaps? Are there jurisdictional conflicts or inconsistencies? Does every state with fixed-site rides have a public safety team qualified and authorized to investigate a catastrophic amusement ride failure? Are critical safety issues being brought to light and effectively addressed in all venues?
• If certain regulatory jurisdictions, companies or business sectors are having more success in reducing risk in certain areas, find out why. What are they doing right? Would it make sense to expand the technique to the entire industry?
• Use a risk-based approach to identify and prioritize problem areas. For example:
  • Collect information from state safety agencies on rides or operational policies that require an unusually high amount of attention (more accidents, more inspections, etc.). Pool the results and re-analyze a few of the most problematic rides or policies from an engineering and human factors standpoint.
  • What about aging rides? Should there be additional inspection, maintenance, or engineering assessments required as a ride passes 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years, or more? What about older ride designs? Is there ever a need to install modern operator controls or restraint/containment features in older ride designs?
  • What about demographic/cultural changes? What happens when the patron base changes over time, but older ride machinery stays the same? The U.S. population is aging and growing fatter, kids are growing taller at a younger age, and more non-English speakers patronize U.S. parks and carnivals. Are these changes creating new hazards on old rides?
• Are certain populations at higher risk for certain types of injury? Are there specific accident/injury patterns that might benefit from a nationwide public education campaign or a more detailed epidemiological study?

Now doesn't that sound like a logical first step? If done thoroughly and without bias, the study findings will either confirm industry's claim that all the safety bases are covered, or form a blueprint for improving the situation. The blueprint may suggest a need for federal regulation of theme park rides, but maybe it won't.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission is the logical agency to conduct the study. They have a staff of engineers, physiologists, epidemiologists and human factors experts, and they've been involved in amusement ride safety for more than three decades. The $500,000 annual stipend in Rep. Markey's bill is a reasonable amount to spend in this way. The cost of the study is easily justified when compared to the cumulative cost of amusement park accidents in the 27 years since Congress exempted the industry from federal safety oversight.

In the end, CPSC, Congress and consumers will have better information on this unique and obscure public safety issue.