On Thanksgiving weekend, the ASTM F24 World Standards Task Group issued what they hope is the final ballot on their new Standard Practice for the Design of Amusement Rides and Devices.  If the vote goes as planned, the new standard will be published early next year.  The World Standards Task Group deserves a hearty round of applause for the endless hours spent researching, writing, and rewriting, and the equally endless hours spent explaining, negotiating, compromising, and politicking to get buy-in from the 400+ members of the F24 committee. 

The final ballot contains the first standardized child safety requirements to be endorsed by the amusement ride industry. New rides intended primarily for children under 12 must be designed with restraints that adjust to fit the patrons.  Signs, verbal instructions, and psychological barriers will no longer be considered appropriate safety protections for small children riding the smallest rides.  That common sense requirement will save a few families from a world of grief, and I'm grateful to the World Standards Task Group for including it.

The kiddie restraint requirement was not written to apply to all kiddies, however.  Its application is tightly targeted to a particular subset of machinery -- small rides that are designed after the publication date of the new standard.  Family rides, such as the roller coaster on which my son was hurt, are not required to have restraints that fit against small children.  Aggressive adult rides with low height limits, such as the Wipeout, are not required to have restraints that fit against small children.  Existing kiddie rides -- which can have an operational life of 50 years or more -- are not required to have restraints that fit against small children.

Child safety standards work best when the language is written to apply to children, not to a machinery subset.  For example, child restraint requirements developed for automobiles apply to all children who ride in cars, not just those who ride in new subcompacts.  Kiddie rides expose young children to fall hazards and machinery hazards, and I'm pleased that the industry is finally doing something to prevent those types of accidents.  But family rides expose young children to fall hazards and machinery hazards, too.  Why protect children on one type of amusement machine, but not another?

I'm often told that change is slow, and that I should be satisfied with baby steps.  At a conceptual level, I agree.  I know how hard it was to get those two sentences included in the new design standard.  I know how many good people went to bat for me behind the scenes.  I am genuinely touched by the movement within this industry over the course of four short years.

The problem is that crushed children aren't a concept to the families involved.  They're more real than you can bear sometimes.  The families who lose children, or parts of their children, in amusement ride machinery accidents aren't comforted to know that some rides have child safety equipment, just not the rides their children had the misfortune to board.  If this industry understands why four-year-olds need physical barriers to keep them away from the moving parts on new kiddie rides, why can't they see that four-year-olds need that same level of protection on all amusement rides?

The fundamental problem, in my opinion, is the industry's inability to look at this stuff head-on and call it what it is.

• The industry refers to crushed children as a "rider misconduct" problem, so industry lawyers pass Rider Responsibility laws designed to eliminate financial liability for those accidents.  Problem solved.
• Instead of collecting and studying accident data in an effort to plan prevention strategies, which is common practice in engineering-based industries, the amusement ride industry invests vast sums of money in legal and political strategies to make sure nobody ever sees the failure data.  Problem solved.
• Euphemisms are employed to protect engineers, owner/operators, and inspectors from thinking of children as children.  For example, Sellner Manufacturing distributed a bulletin earlier this year lowering the height limits for unaccompanied riders from 42" to 36" on a dozen of their rides.  A 42" inch minimum height limit corresponds to a 3.5-year minimum age limit, according to current growth charts.  A 36" minimum height limit corresponds to a 21-month minimum age limit.  Under "Reason for Release", Sellner's bulletin stated that "Sellner Manufacturing feels that a person 36 inches in height can safely experience the ride without being accompanied by a responsible person".  Persons 36 inches in height are better known as "toddlers", and they have a spectacularly bad safety record when it comes to experiencing amusement ride machinery alone.  According to state accident logs, serious containment failures peak in the 2-year-old age group.

I don't mean to single out Sellner here.  The entire industry is set up to ignore or deny failures related to simple child safety concepts.  That wouldn't be a problem if there was a comprehensive regulatory structure to effectively address those issues, such as establishing realistic criteria for minimum height limits.  Manufacturers don't have to justify height limits, or changes in height limits, to anybody.  Major modifications to the machinery are sometimes subject to approval, or at least inspection, by state regulatory agencies, but major modifications to the operational parameters are not.  Sellner's decision to reduce the minimum height requirement by 6 inches on a dozen kiddie rides might not sound like a big deal, but when you translate height to age, they're cutting the minimum age of an unaccompanied rider in half (40 months to 21 months).  There is a vast difference between a preschooler's ability to protect him/herself from machinery hazards, and a toddler's ability to protect him/herself from those same hazards. 

If Sellner had to eliminate the euphemisms from its bulletin, and write "Sellner Manufacturing feels that 1-year-olds can protect themselves from machinery hazards in open, spinning vehicles without child restraints", perhaps they'd get a few comments from their customers and the regulatory community.  They don't, though.  Commerce thrives on euphemisms, and let the buyer beware.  Only, in this case, the buyers who should beware are the customer's customers.  They don't even get to see the euphemistic bulletins.  All they know is that a company they trust has taken a lot of their hard-earned money and, in trade, has assured them that the open, spinning vehicle without child restraints that's painted and themed to look like a friendly cartoon butterfly is the safest form of family entertainment -- safe enough for their 1-year-old to ride in alone.

In most cases, things work out okay.  The vast majority of children exposed to serious safety hazards come away unscathed.  That's true whether you're talking about guns in the home or drain cleaner under the sink or pit bulls in the backyard -- or heavy machinery painted and themed to look like a friendly cartoon butterfly.  When things go wrong on amusement rides, though, they often go badly wrong.  Bad accidents don't always threaten the stability of the businesses involved, but they invariably threaten the stability of the families whose children are hurt.  If the amusement ride industry really does care deeply about its customers, they should be willing to take more than baby steps toward prevention. 

The thrill ride crowd is nothing if not bold.  Why not take big, bold giant steps to offer children real protection.  Some of those crushed kiddie accidents can be prevented, but only if the industry is willing to look past its euphemisms and see things as they really are: 

• Machines are more likely to crush children who aren't strapped down.  When children are properly restrained, fewer of them will fall into the machinery.  That is true on any ride:  big or small, old or new.
• The best way to prevent future machinery accidents is to study past machinery accidents.  When information on system failures is logged, analyzed, and shared, fewer repeat failures will occur.  That is true for any industry:  big or small, old or new, self-regulated or government-regulated.
• The American Academy of Pediatrics believes that children lack the maturity to cross a busy intersection on their own until they reach the age of eight or nine.  It is pure fantasy to think that 1-year-olds are mature enough to "experience" heavy machinery without being accompanied by a responsible person.

The new Standard Practice for the Design of Amusement Rides and Devices is a first-class piece of work.  It will provide real and lasting benefits to the industry and its customers.  Our children need more, though.  They need the industry's commitment to make all amusement ride equipment safe for the youngest passengers.  They need the industry's willingness to learn as much as possible from each tragedy.  Our children need the industry to take big, bold giant steps toward preventing childhood accidents on amusement ride machinery.  This industry has the talent, heart, and imagination to do that.  All that's missing, that I can see, is the collective will.

Person (David Fackler) 36 inches in height experiencing amusement ride machinery while being accompanied by a responsible person.