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Welcome to the new face of Saferparks. The cosmetic and organizational changes to the website reflect both a renewed commitment and a shift in course. Despite my best intentions and fervent prayers, Saferparks' 2003 Agenda did not lead to a sustainable retirement. I will not be hanging up my gadfly wings quite yet. I am, however, hoping to pare them down to a more manageable size and shape.
The year of "rest and recharge" offered me the gift of time, space, and privacy to re-envision Saferparks' role as a consumer organization. Stepping back from the conflict and letting go of the daily drama granted a much clearer perspective. Because I wasn't constantly locking horns with the industry attorneys, it was easier to recognize positive changes in safety technology, policies, and attitudes. For example:
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Disney's "Wild About Safety" Campaign
Last spring, the Walt Disney Company unveiled a fabulous public education program for its theme parks. "Wild About Safety" uses cartoon characters Pumba and Timon from The Lion King to teach kids and parents ride safety concepts. Disney provides extensive online resources so that kids and parents can become familiar with the concepts before they get to the park. -
ASTM F-24 Industry Standards Committee
The World Standards Task Group of the ASTM F-24 committee invited regulatory officials and consumer advocates (me) to help them work the kinks out of the kiddie ride restraint requirement in the new design standard. That effort raised more questions than it answered, which I consider a huge step forward. Keeping children safe in open vehicles and heavy machinery is a complex problem. The only way to find an effective, workable solution to a complex problem is to get all the pieces out on the table and dive in. -
California Rulemaking
After four years, we've finally passed the half-way mark on rulemaking for AB850. The second of three regulatory packages required to implement the 1999 California Amusement Park Rides Safety Act was adopted last July. Work hasn't started on the Penalty Regs, but the state has promised to schedule a meeting of the advisory committee this spring. The California amusement parks rate high marks from state inspectors for their cooperative spirit and willingness to comply with the spirit of the new law. -
California Attractions and Parks Association (CAPA)
The California permanent parks formed a trade organization to provide a cohesive, united front for the industry on legislative/regulatory issues. Oddly enough, I think CAPA will be beneficial to the process in California. If Senator Torlakson or Saferparks -- or anybody else, for that matter -- has a specific policy concern, we can talk to CAPA and know that all the parks will be apprised of the issue.
Of course there's a potential downside as well. Combining Disney, Universal, Anheiser Busch, Six Flags, Cedar Fair, and small businesses from every legislative district in the state into a single political force could spell big league trouble for consumer rights and safety. It all depends on where the industry chooses to position its cohesive, united front. For the moment, I'm willing to give CAPA the benefit of the doubt. I choose to see it as a stabilizing influence and extend a long-distance peace pipe to executive director John Robinson. -
CPSC Ride Restraint Investigation
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has scheduled an investigation of restraint systems on portable amusement rides for 2004 to "evaluate the need for, or adequacy of, safety standards". Although the CPSC is prohibited from including permanent ride restraint failures in its investigation, any improvements to the industry standards for restraints will benefit amusement park patrons as well as carnival patrons. [description]
Given so much good news, why then did I break retirement and re-up -- with a long-term agenda, no less? Well, it's the balance thing that keeps bringing me back. Although industry deserves the lion's share of credit for the achievements listed above, it's likely that none of those milestones would've happened (so quickly anyway) without Saferparks. I'm the yin to their yang.
Everybody needs somebody to hold them accountable, to speak up when policy needs changing or perspective needs broadening. Saferparks is the antidote to inertia for this uniquely brilliant, but occasionally complacent, industry. That's answer number one.
Answer number two is that a few families need me to shepherd them through the personal hell that self-regulation creates for victims and their families in the wake of a serious accident. If you really want to know, it was Betty Baldwin who pulled me out of retirement. Betty's daughter, Tina, died in 2001 when she was fatally ejected from a speed slide at an unregulated Phoenix waterpark. Betty contacted me last spring because she still didn't know -- two years after her daughter's death -- what had caused the accident, or what (if anything) had been done to prevent the same mysterious thing from killing somebody else's child.
I wasn't able to get Betty's questions answered, but I was able to help Betty know that people cared about what happened to her daughter. I was able to explain the odd politics that allow fatal machinery accidents to go uninvestigated on some commercial thrill rides, but not on others. I couldn't connect Betty with the people she should've learned the truth from, but I was able to connect her with reasonable facsimiles: a representative from the industry who could tell her (two years later) how sorry he was for her loss; engineers from regulatory agencies who could explain some of the physics behind speed slides like the one that ended Tina's life and suggest possible causes for the ejection. It was a shabby stand-in for a real accident investigation, but it offered Betty and her surviving children a context in which to place Tina's death. Betty found a small measure of peace.
Within weeks of the meeting with Betty and her children, another woman died on an unregulated Sizzler ride at a carnival in Prescott Valley, Arizona. The dead woman left behind a 4-month old baby daughter and a mother who, like Betty, wants to know what happened. The carnival ride moved on to play its next scheduled show at Mesa College near Phoenix. Despite police videotapes indicating that the ride was spinning significantly faster than recommended by the manufacturer, no agency had authority to conduct a technical investigation or shut down the ride pending proof that it was operating safely. Lt. Janik from the Prescott Valley Police Department said that he heard the carnival owner had eventually "gotten rid of the ride". There's no way of knowing where it is now. Or how fast it's spinning. Or whose child will climb on board next. Maybe yours?
Betty and Cruzita deserve to know whatever can be known about their daughters' deaths. They need support in understanding why that will never be possible. They need their stories heard. I don't know anyone else who's willing and able to give them that, except Saferparks.
