The chief executive of Six Flags says the company will install seat belts on the Georgia roller coaster from which a rider fell to his death earlier this month. The company’s rides with similar restraints will also get the safety upgrade.
The theme park operator announced the extra safeguard less than two weeks after 42-year-old Hassan Jihad Ibn Kariem of Atlanta died after being ejected from his seat on the Goliath coaster at Six Flags Over Georgia.
My first thought on that ride as a teenager was “wow, this is the only restraint? No seat belt?”
If the restraint is working properly then it doesn’t need a seatbelt. They are probably skipping out on necessary maintenance that keeps the restraining devices in proper working order. Rather that make sure safety rules are maintained, just add a seatbelt under the device that might break.
Having multiple independent points of failure is not “unnecessary maintenance”. The entire point is that in the case of “something is not working properly” that there is another independent safety mechanism that would also have to fail for the rider to be ejected. This is basic design in redundancy and safety.
“We don’t need seat belts if drivers are driving properly”
“We don’t need oxygen tanks if planes are operating correctly”
This ride, at least when I rode it, is just an upgraded lap bar essentially. Which is reliant on someone’s physical body proportions being the main thing that keeps someone inside.
Sorry for the reddit link but I’m on mobile and my image upload isn’t working.
https://www.reddit.com/r/rollercoasters/comments/ezy1qr/goliath_at_six_flags_over_georgia/
But it’s looks like that.
Even wooden roller coasters have seat belts. It’s absolutely insane that someone had to die before they put them in the ride.
Every other roller coaster at that park, at least when I went, had at least two forms of restraints. It is far from “unnecessary maintenance”. It’s literally standard practice.
Canada’s Wonderland has 2 similar rides, the Behemoth and the Leviathan. When I last went in 2009 they did not have secondary restraints. I rode Behemoth multiple times and tried it both flexing leg muscles when locking it down to give myself some play then relaxing and with it very tight.
I liked it both ways, even relaxed there was no way I was coming loose but it did give me a bit more movement.
I’m not saying seatbelts are a bad thing, I’m more saying lax safety standards are making them needed because companies can’t be trusted to maintain to a high enough degree that lives wouldn’t be lost from maintenance issues.
The original design of those particular restraints has 4 separate pawls that engage with the ratchet holding down the restraint, any one of them is more than capable of holding the full force of even the largest rider. The newer versions are purportedly half ratcheting half hydraulic, but that’s not what was present on the Goliath in question.
The unlocking mechanism works on the entire row at once, so since it was just the one seat it’s probably not related to that.
B&M, the Swiss manufacturer also has notably not suggested any other customers close their similar rides pending investigation.
All that’s fine. But, the point is redundancy. It’s not about the safety factor of an individual restraint. You can have the strongest and most reliable safety mechanism; you still design safety around having multiple independent points of failure.
The “seat belt” is a restraint that is not doing anything 99.999% of the time. For some people, that might seem like a “unnecessary” part as the comment I was replying to stated.
But that’s the entire point. And a secondary form of restraint that is independent is the entire point. I just wish someone didn’t have to die before that happened.
What the corporations talking heads decide is “necessary” is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about safety from the perspective of an engineer.
I use to work in power systems and designed redundant power supply arrays. For some customers, like hospitals, they don’t just factor in a “n+1” (n active with 1 redundant) redundancy. They require a “n+m” (often with m>n) redundancy because of the critical operation of their power infrastructure. Because operating standards and regulations force them into maintaining this level redundancy.
Meaning, an array of power supplies that needed 4 power supplies to operate would have 4 or more additional redundant power supplies doing “nothing” most of the time. Because you don’t design around “the average day”. You design systems like this around “the worst possible day”.
So, when the dumb guy that plugs in the wrong power cable, ignores the flashing lights, burns a power supply, and then thinks “hmmm not working, let me try plugging it into another one.” When that dumb guy comes around. People in the hospital have the best chance of survival.
Right what I’m saying is internally it is 4x redundant and is designed to fail safe regardless.
Here’s an old (2006) publicly available version of ASTM F2291 which governs amusement ride safety, notably class 5 restraints (highest tier) must be either redundant (i.e. two distinct devices as you suggest, or fail safe) and have external verification, which in the case for these ones is a proximity sensor that gets flagged once the pawls have dropped in by enough teeth
Did you feel like you were riding a flying carpet?
Honestly, everytime I road it I DIDN’T have that feeling because of the knowledge that I didn’t have a seatbelt on.
Youve got a lap bar, and the roller coaster lover in you wants to raise your hands and maybe even push off your feet a little to raise your body into the air. Which would be awesome, if you had a physical strap holding you under the main restraint.
But, I never did, the restraint feels like you can slip out. And, I remember “testing it” too. I sat forward in my seat and stuck by gut out, the operators let the ride go with the restraint clearly not tight enough on my body. I had ridden it enough times to know that I could still click it and lock it myself going up the hill. Which I did, obviously. But I can definitely see how that could happen without the rider even noticing.
But, is is kind of wild, to see this article after all these years. I always felt that the restraints on that ride were bad.