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The biggest problem with self-regulation is the absence of a central, impartial authority to investigate allegations like those being raised by amusement ride patrons who claim to have suffered brain injuries while riding high-g rides. If the Brain Bleed Question were being levied at the aviation industry, the Federal Aviation Administration or the National Transportation Safety Board would have already conducted a quiet, civilized, and reasonably thorough investigation. When that investigation was over, the public would've gotten an answer they could trust and understand. This isn't happening in the aviation industry, though. It's happening in the thrill ride industry, and there isn't any public safety agency with jurisdiction to investigate.
Self-regulation means the amusement ride industry has to make its case through the press and the civil courts -- over and over again, each time a new story pops up. Self-regulation means that consumers have to rely on news reporters to wade through the assorted articles, anecdotes, press releases, and personal opinions, and publish credible safety information. Instead of a systematic approach to accident prevention, we use the civil court system to dig up, and then seal, evidence on accidents; and the free press to create a public record of injuries. Mass media self-regulation shifts the emphasis from safety and prevention to money and scandal. It's a barbaric way to keep 300 million people safe on high-tech, high-speed machinery.
Medical research articles insert a refreshingly scientific note into this public spectacle, but the lack of an overarching regulatory model handicaps those efforts as well. The latest article, just published in the Journal of Neurotrauma, chronicles a small study undertaken by Doctors Smith and Meaney from the University of Pennsylvania, to determine whether non-contact accelerations induced from three randomly-chosen U.S. roller coasters could put riders at risk for brain injury. The article looks at the Brain Bleed Question from a theoretical focus, and does an excellent job of explaining the "fundamental misunderstanding of how G forces play a role in the biomechanics of brain injury". The second paragraph alone is worth the price of admission.
I had a hard time, however, following the authors' reasoning as they correlated roller coaster accelerations to amateur boxing and concluded with a recommendation that roller coaster riders use seatbelts when driving automobiles. I was also frustrated by the three rides the authors selected for study. Why choose three coasters at random when most of the anecdotal evidence that's driving this debate is clustered around a few specific rides? If Smith and Meaney wanted to sample accelerometer data on a coaster in Las Vegas, for example, why not talk with the regulatory official whose job it is to monitor amusement ride safety in that city and ask which coaster he'd choose? That's the difference between a University research project and a coordinated public safety investigation. Public safety isn't restricted to theory.
The longer the media tug-and-pull drags on, the angrier and more resistant both sides get. The F24 Design and Manufacture subcommittee had a heated argument over the Brain Bleed Question at the October meeting. I think a big part of the anger and accusations that invariably accompany this issue could be eliminated if there was a qualified, impartial agency with jurisdiction to conduct a quiet, civilized, and reasonably thorough investigation. This shouldn't be happening in public -- certainly not in the media, and not even in the smaller space of a hotel meeting room.
The heated exchange over brain bleeds at the ASTM meeting brought out at least one interesting point, though. Listening to Dr. Brown, it sounds like the industry is taking a very narrow slice of the neurological injury pie into account when they say that coasters don't cause brain injuries. Dr. Brown told the regulator who brought up the Brain Bleed Question that the medical cause of all the cases they had studied was spontaneous rupture of a pre-existing, albeit undiagnosed, berry aneurysm. The brain injury phenomenon -- whether those cases prove to be ride-related or not -- is certainly broader than that.
That's the problem with the piecemeal approach to public safety. Dr. Brown is looking into the berry aneurysms. Drs. Smith and Meaney studied the theoretical safety of three coasters without considering the operational safety records of those rides. The Brain Injury Association of America is currently studying a discrete set of ride-related brain injury reports. Dr. Meaney is a member of that panel as well. All of those efforts are worthy and well-intentioned, but even the most inclusive study of brain injuries is still missing the larger point. Extremes of position, velocity, acceleration, and jerk can produce a wide range of serious physical problems. The Consumer Product Safety Commission is investigating a carnival accident in which the normal motion of a thrill ride broke a girl's neck. An extreme coaster in Ohio broke the necks of two men in two separate accidents last year, but the CPSC is prohibited by law from broadening its investigation to include broken necks at permanent parks.
Theory is great. It's the obvious starting point for any engineering effort. But without a comprehensive system for collecting, analyzing, and disseminating failure data, theory is still just an educated guess. Theory can't explain away all the injuries we're seeing. In the real world, all coasters are not uniformly smooth and all patrons are not built like amateur boxers. In the real world, injuries are occurring beyond those described by Dr. Brown. The people suffering those injuries don't especially care whether the root cause of their pain and medical bills is sustained acceleration, jerk, the angle at which they happened to be holding their head, a poorly machined section of track, or something else entirely. They just want to know that somebody they can trust is working the problem.
And that sums up my frustration as well. This is a serious issue. The injuries may be statistically rare, but they can be life-threatening and life-altering. When it's my child's brain on the line, I don't want to get my safety advice from USA Today or the Los Angeles Times , or even the Journal of Neurotrauma . I don't want to hear TV pundits scaring the public, or industry lobbyists spinning accidents away. I don't want to watch engineers and regulators argue over who's right, especially when they're people I respect as much as I do the members of the F24 committee. I just want somebody to be looking at the whole picture on behalf of the small, but important, percentage of riders who get hurt.
We'll never put the Brain Bleed Question to rest if we can't create a safe space where the people who design rides, the people who operate rides, the people who regulate rides, and the people who think they've been injured on rides can all have their say. Someplace private where personal tragedy and corporate reputations aren't offered up as the entertainment du jour. We'll never put the Brain Bleed Question to rest until we can have a civil discussion about the whole imperfect human-and-machine pie of motion-related injuries -- including the headbanging injuries, the head-turned-at-the-wrong-moment injuries, the force-related broken neck injuries, and why many of these incidents seem to be clustered around specific rides and specific body types.
I have a nine-year-old child who weighs 71 pounds fully dressed and is tall enough to ride just about any coaster in America. He doesn't have the size, neck strength, or reactions of an amateur boxer. I want to know which rides are safe for him -- not in a theoretical sense, but in everyday practice. I want to know what might happen if he moves his head at the wrong moment. I want to know if there are particular rides or containment systems that might bang his head around like a clapper in a bell or snap his neck like a twig. I want to know those things so that I can feel comfortable taking him to theme parks. Transparency is the key to consumer confidence. Hasn't the business community learned that lesson yet?
The latest CPSC report on amusement ride-related injuries states that head injuries accounted for 20% of the total injuries in the years 1997-2001. More than 1,000 of those injuries resulted in concussions. Head, neck, and back injuries top the list of ride-related accidents reported by state regulatory agencies as well. The slang term "headbanging ride" was coined by ride enthusiasts long before Congressman Markey and a few concerned physicians raised the Brain Bleed Question and outraged a powerful industry.
Consumers have a right to know which rides are more likely to hurt people, which people are at highest risk, and what types of injuries they're at risk of. A study here and a study there won't answer the larger question. What can patrons reasonably expect in terms of injuries related to the normal motion of thrill rides? That's what somebody should be asking. That's what some public safety agency should be answering on behalf of the consumers who spend $10 billion every year on thrill rides, and trust their lives to those powerful machines.
For more information on the he-said-she-said-they-said world of ride-related brain bleed research articles, visit the Brain Injury Research page.
