Text-only version
I've been spending time lately putting together a new website. My critics will be happy to hear that the new project has nothing to do with safety or the amusement ride industry. It does, however, have a lot to do with children, and I provide a form that allows kids to sign up for an electronic newsletter. As a parent, I was a little disturbed to find out how inexpensive and easy it is to create a website that solicits personal information from children over the internet. Sure, I've been listening to the warnings and spot checking my kids' web usage, but it wasn't until I did it myself that I really understood -- in my gut -- the potential danger. Sounds a bit like taking preschoolers on open-sided roller coasters, doesn't it?
It seemed to me that somebody should be watching out for child safety on the internet. Lo and behold, somebody is. That somebody is the Federal Trade Commission and this was lifted directly from their website:
The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), passed by Congress in October 1998, requires the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to issue and enforce rules concerning children's online privacy. The FTC issued the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule in November 1999; it has been in effect since April 21, 2000. The Rule's primary goal: to place parents in control over what information is collected from their children online.
COPPA is what child safety regulation should be: clear, concise, easy to comply with, and graciously supported by the business community. The FTC has an entire website devoted to helping people understand and comply with the law. The Direct Marketing Association offers a free forms-based tool to help webmasters draft their company's online privacy policy. While looking for real-world examples, I checked out Disney's online privacy policy for kids. As is the case with most everything that Disney chooses to embrace, their privacy policy was simply and beautifully executed.
It only took me two hours to figure out how to comply with this law -- because government and the private sector had laid the foundation by working together as a team to protect children.
According to Hobbes' Internet Timeline, businesses and media begin taking notice of the Internet in 1993, the same year that the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives went online. Within five years, Congress had passed a law that helps parents protect their children from harmful side-effects of this new technology. The federal government and interested parties (i.e., industry) wrapped up the rule-making process within 13 months. Implementation was finished six months later. Shall we compare this to child safety in the amusement ride industry?
I don't have a complete timeline for this industry, but I know that Ferris wheels are more than 100 years old. Disneyland is coming up on its 50th anniversary. The federal theme park exemption is 21 years old. The ASTM F-24 committee is almost that old. And there still aren't any child safety laws to help parents protect their children from harmful side-effects of amusement rides. There aren't even any voluntary child safety standards for the U.S. industry.
I can hear Brett Lovejoy's potential replacements muttering under their collective breath about smear campaigns and half truths and the glories of state regulation. So, in the interest of fairness, let's see how much better state regulators are than the bloated, inept feds. Take California for example:
- In 1968, California passed its amusement ride safety law regulating all amusement rides, except "amusement rides of a permanent nature". (This is what the IAAPA lobbyists mean when they say things like "every state that has a park has its own set of standards and regulations". Theme parks in states like Florida, and until recently California, comply with regulatory laws that exempt them from compliance with safety regulations. Sort of Clintonesque, wouldn't you say? Let's see how this careful phrasing translates to Utah, home of Lagoon, the biggest privately-owned theme park in the U.S. Utah has a park, many in fact, and no regulatory laws governing amusement rides. Utah does, however, have its own set of standards and regulations which apply to things found Utah's amusement parks, say hotdogs or toys sold in the gift shop or even the wiring system of the rides. Utah just doesn't have any regulations that apply specifically to thrill rides. So if you parse the lobbyist's sentence correctly, you find that every state that has a park does, in fact, have standards and regulations.)
- 31 years and six legislative attempts after California's theme park exemption became law, the state legislature finally managed to pass a bill intended to help parents protect their children from the harmful side-effects of amusement park rides.
- Governor Davis signed AB 850 into law on October 2, 1999. Three years later, the state is still debating rules with government relations lawyers from Disney and Universal. Only one of three regulatory documents has been approved. There is no completion schedule for the remaining two documents. Every year the state holds another hearing where 1) the grieving mommies ask why it's taking so long and why a simple accident prevention system needs so many loopholes and exemptions; 2) a few theme park representatives sit silently and watch us cry, 3) someone from the state assures the mommies that one more 15-day notice will wrap everything up. Disney, the company that's driving this effort, doesn't even bother to show up to the public hearings. I wouldn't either if I had a more direct route to press my agenda. The hearings are democratic window dressing. They have nothing to do with policy.
- On the implementation side, the state is investigating some of the more serious accidents reported to them, which is the only stable progress I've seen. After two years of dickering, the state finally abandoned all efforts at clarifying the double-negative-subjective-qualifier-accident-reporting-loophole inserted into the law by the industry lobbyists in 1999, so now nobody knows what injuries the parks are reporting. The inspection program is scheduled to start six months after the second regulatory document is adopted, but nobody knows when that will be.
- None of the regulatory components that have been implemented thus far are enforceable, nor will they be until the third document is finalized and adopted. The state hasn't started on that document yet and won't until we're done having hearings on the second document. It may be moot anyway because the Disney/Universal lobby squad has been pressuring the legislature to remove the enforcement paragraph from the law. At this point, I'm almost hoping they succeed. Otherwise we're in for another multi-year effort to craft language that looks like enforcement regulations, but really isn't.
- The state has, so far anyway, refused to include the two requirements Saferparks asked for in the Technical Regulations: 1) that amusement park rides use age-appropriate safety protections and 2) that information on known hazards be disseminated to everyone responsible for mitigating the hazard. At the last hearing, Saferparks asked the state to prohibit children under 16 from operating thrill rides and to require that ride attendants remain sober on the job. I've not gotten a final answer yet, but preliminary discussions indicate that the state lacks statutory authority to implement those common sense restrictions.
I will freely admit that comparing child safety regulations for the internet with child safety regulations for amusement rides is unfair. The only thing that could possibly take longer than implementing the California Permanent Amusement Rides Safety Act is if something were to upset the economic applecart that's keeping Congressman Markey's bill locked up in committee. We're talking decades of rule-making at the federal level. Thank God we're not in any danger of that. But comparing the two issues does help to clarify how laws are made in a free enterprise political system.
Congress was able to efficiently pass a law that helps parents protect their children from the harmful side-effects of internet technology because the law didn't cut into anybody's business. Internet sales are pitched to people with credit cards, so it's not a big deal to cut children under 13 out of the market. The real sickos who might target children for more dangerous exploitation over the internet don't have an effective lobby in Washington. So there wasn't anybody to muck up the lawmaking process.
People who work on thrill rides are protected as well, because they've got the unions fighting for them. If a Disney World employee is crushed by an amusement ride, OSHA is empowered to investigate and Disney is required to pay the medical bills. If a toddler is crushed by an amusement ride at Disney World, nobody has authority to investigate and nobody outside the company has to be notified. Even the police are prohibited from setting foot on Disney's Florida property without permission. I think that is creepy, but it's also reality. Amusement park patrons don't have an effective lobby. The industry does.
Congress isn't going to help parents protect their children from the harmful side-effects of amusement park technology as long as the theme park industry opposes child safety legislation. That's the bad news, but it's also the good news. There's an enormous sense of freedom in giving up naive ideas about the inherent goodness and fairness of corporations and politicians. Individuals have so much power, energy, and clear sight, but we have to break away from our dependency on the men in charge.
If the government won't help us figure out which thrill ride technologies are safe for our children and ourselves, then we'll teach each other. It's not that hard to do. Accident prevention isn't rocket science. All it takes is a logical mind and a willing heart -- and a little help from the internet. As long as Congress continues to defend my constitutional right to free speech, I will continue to offer the public an alternative to IAAPA's carefully parsed sentences. In my book, it's free speech, not free markets, that makes our country great. Market success, like political access, is reserved for the privileged few, but freedom of speech belongs to all Americans. So does freedom of choice.
