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In July of 2003, the National Safety Council asked Saferparks to submit an article for publication in its quarterly newsletter, Injury Insights. In March of 2004, the editor informed me that Injury Insights had been sunsetted right after the Theme Park PR issue, and efforts to develop an electronic forum for discussing injury research had stalled due to limited resources.
Thrill rides expose millions of excited children and adults to heights, speeds, forces, and machinery hazards that aren't encountered anywhere else in daily life. Common sense and rational science tell us that the physiological effects of those rapidly-evolving technologies should be closely monitored. Yet there is no effective system to collect accident data on U.S. amusement rides, no overarching regulatory structure to ensure that consumer safety issues are impartially investigated and publicly aired.
There are only two public sources of safety data on U.S. amusement rides:
- The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) provides statistical estimates of ride-related injuries based on a sampling of emergency room records from 100 hospitals across the country. Those records provide some insight into physical symptoms and diagnoses commonly associated with amusement ride injuries, but medical records cannot provide technical information needed to determine the causes of injury or identify the rides on which in those injuries occurred.
- Accident logs and investigation reports from state amusement ride regulatory agencies provide limited technical information on ride-related injuries. Only a dozen states provide public accident records upon request. Some of those records offer useful technical information, but only rarely do they include verified and detailed medical descriptions of the injuries sustained.
The CPSC estimates that more than 40,000 amusement ride-related injuries were treated in emergency rooms from 1993-2000. Injuries to neck (16.2%), head (10.1%), lower trunk (11.9%) and upper trunk (9.2%) were most common, together accounting for 47.5% of treated injuries. Most injuries occurred to children 10-14 years old (17.9%), with children 5-9 (12.6%) and 15-19 years old (13.8%) next, but with many victims 0-4 years old (6.3%).
Overall, females were injured about 1.5 times more often than males, however the higher risk was primarily concentrated in the 10-34 year old age group, where females were twice as likely as males to be injured. Females suffered a significantly higher ratio of injuries to neck, trunk, arm, ankle, knee, foot, and ear. Although females did not have a significantly higher number of head injuries than males, females were 3 times as likely to be diagnosed with concussion.
Half of all ride-related accidents reported by state agencies involve injuries to children between the ages of 1 and 13. Accident rates rise at age 3, peak at age 11, and drop sharply after age 13. Most commonly affected body parts were head/face (25%), neck (12%), leg (10%), and back (8%).
Injuries related to the normal motion of amusement rides account for the largest portion of accidents reported to state agencies. Although operators most often reported injuries as minor (scrapes and bruises, neck or back pain, bumps on the head), some accidents involved very serious injuries to patrons. For example, an extreme roller coaster in Ohio broke the necks of two men in two separate accidents four weeks apart. State regulators allowed the coaster to re-open following each broken neck because park maintenance reports indicated that the "track and train cars were operating in a normal manner and no adjustments were needed". Following the second broken neck, the park agreed to play a recorded message warning patrons in line that the coaster has an "aggressive nature".
State accident logs point to child safety as another obvious area of interest for any prevention effort. Reports of serious containment failures (forceful ejection, falls from moving rides, body parts caught in machinery) almost exclusively involve young children, although obese patrons also run a higher risk of ejection in some containment systems. Amusement park rides are not governed by any federal mandates for child-safe design. Minimum height limits are set by ride manufacturers; they are not subject to review or approval by any safety agency. Toddlers and preschoolers are routinely placed in open vehicles without child restraints. Falling or jumping out of a moving ride is a leading cause of ride-related injury for children under seven. Kiddie rides designed after April 2003 and operated in states that adopt the new industry design standard (ASTM F2291) will be required to have some type of close fitting restraint, but family/adult rides and existing kiddie rides are not required to have seat belts or enclosed sides.
A few examples can help to illustrate the high-stakes nature of amusement ride accidents. In 1999, 12-year-old Josh Smurphat fell 140 feet from a free-fall machine and died from the impact. In 2000, 4-year-old Brandon Zucker fell out the open side of a slow-moving family ride designed without child restraints, and was crushed underneath the next car. He spent six-weeks in a coma and is now profoundly brain damaged. In 2001, 6-year-old Piguet Johnson was seriously injured when he was forcefully ejected from an aggressive whirling ride that employs a one-size-fits-all lap restraint. The following spring, 4-year-old Madeline Truitt suffered a critical head injury after being ejected from the same type of whirling ride at a different venue. Those accidents happened to take place in California, but similar tragedies happen in every state. All of those accidents were preventable.
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 as true for amusement rides as it is for airplanes, trains, and automobiles. Yet despite years of public controversy, including a congressional hearing in 2000, there is still no system in place to collect, study, and disseminate information on ride-related accidents at U.S. amusement parks. There is still no public agency in the United States with authority to examine systemic issues such as child-safe ride design, or monitor the health effects of human exposure to rapidly changing extremes of position, velocity, and acceleration.
Permanent amusement rides have been exempt from all federal safety oversight since 1981. Four years ago, Congressman Ed Markey introduced legislation to repeal the 1981 exemption. His bill remains stalled in committee due to strong opposition by the theme park industry.
The International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) recently unveiled its own private accident reporting system, created under pressure from the House Commerce Committee. Instead of gathering information on the ways in which patrons are being hurt, the rides or types of equipment involved, or the factors that might put certain types of patrons at higher risk on certain types of rides, IAAPA simply asked its member parks to anonymously report a yearly injury count. The industry trade association then uses the unverified counts to estimate an injuries-per-ride-cycle ratio. IAAPA's self-reporting system reduces thousands of unique incidents - thousands of learning opportunities - into a single abstract number that amortizes the crushed children and broken necks over its entire customer base and implies all rides are equally safe for all humans under all conditions.
Machinery accidents cannot be combined and subdivided mathematically. Ejection accidents are different than metal fatigue accidents or entrapment accidents or whiplash accidents. Hazard avoidance for 4-year-olds is different than hazard avoidance for 8-year-olds or 13-year-olds or 60-year-olds. Risk factors vary from machine to machine, patron to patron, operator to operator. The bits and pieces of data we have illuminate only bits and pieces of the problem. If we want to prevent ride-related accidents, we need an effective unbiased system to study ride related failures - one that applies equally to all rides in all venues and all states. A comprehensive approach to accident prevention requires a comprehensive approach to accident reporting.
