Parents May Have to Judge if Fun-Ride Safe

“Hurtling at speeds up to 55 m.p.h.,” says one ad, Magic Mountain’s Revolution roller coaster will “shoot you through a 144-foot tunnel” and “turn you topsy-turvy in a 360-degree vertical loop.” Sounds like a heck of a ride.

There’s one requirement: Riders must be “at least 42 inches to ride.” This means that 4-year-olds are welcome, as they are on the 10-story “FreeFall,” the 50-foot slide into a 20-foot “Tidal Wave.” A 48-inch child (7 or 8) can hop on all but one of Magic Mountain’s “spine-tingling” rides, and the park’s not unique. Even Disneyland invites a 40-inch child (3 years old?), if accompanied, to take Space Mountain’s in-the-dark roller coaster, or Splash Mountain’s five-story, 47-degree plunge.

This doesn’t seem right. Even if the given safety restraints can secure bodies that size (the basis of height designations), are such rides really appropriate for small children? “A lot of kids come off these rides hysterical,” says Joseph Greensher, a Mineola, N.Y., pediatrician who is past chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ accident- and poison-prevention committee. “It’s like parents throwing them in the air: They scream not with glee but with fear.”

Indeed, park rides are meant to be frightening, suggestive of danger. But the possibility of actual danger is a touchy subject. Parks are “like airlines,” says Knott’s Berry Farm spokesman Stuart Zanville. “You know the rides are safe; you don’t want people questioning them.”

As with airlines, accidents are infrequent--maybe “two injuries per 100,000 guests, and usually minor,” says Harold Hudson, vice president of engineering for Six Flags corporation in Arlington, Tex. “But if you have an accident, it’s big news--like an airline crash.”

They do happen. According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, 6,500 injuries from amusement park rides ended up in emergency rooms last year. Half were suffered at fixed-site parks, half at mobile fairs and carnivals. Furthermore, analysis of some 90 ride-related deaths between 1973 and 1988 indicated that whirling rides and roller coasters were most often involved.

In these stories, and other news reports over the years, mechanical failure was sometimes the cause. There were terrifying stories of people falling or being thrown out when seating compartments broke off their supports, or cars derailing or colliding, or doors becoming unlatched. In some cases, operators made tragic mistakes, usually involving restraints that weren’t properly locked.

Rider behavior often caused or contributed to the tragedy. People stood up in mid-ride or tried to change seats. Teen-agers climbed towers, walked guardrails, rocked gondolas; children slipped out of their restraints.

Even if regulation could anticipate all accidents, regulation has been spotty. The CPSC regulates only mobile carnivals, and it doesn’t do that very much. With neither “the staff nor the money for periodic checks and inspections,” says CPSC compliance officer James DeMarco, its work is “only reactive,” meaning it investigates after a tragedy.

Some 37 states do inspect amusement park operations, with variable stringency, but sometimes, again, the inspections apply only to mobile parks. Local authorities are the ones most likely to review plans for fixed construction. They may, as in Los Angeles County (home of Magic Mountain), inspect regularly as well.

But built-in safety depends on the designers, manufacturers and operators, with safety restraints only the final, most obvious factor, varied according to the ride. With flumes and water rides, seating riders low in the boat is considered containment enough. Standard roller coasters, however speedy, generally have lap bars.

More encompassing restraints, coming down over the shoulders and chest, are needed for upside-down rides, including today’s bendable-steel “looping” coasters. The pioneering Corkscrew at Knott’s (1975) had two rolls. Magic Mountain’s Viper takes the rider upside-down seven times--one two-roll corkscrew, three loops (360-degree arcs) and one two-parabola boomerang.

Because centrifugal force presses riders into their seats when a coaster goes upside-down, restraints are “not designed to let the rider hang in the seat,” says Dal Freeman, director of engineering at Arrow Dynamics in Clearfield, Utah. It has designed rides ranging from Disney’s Matterhorn to the Viper, but in a way that gives riders “something to hold on to” and keeps them properly positioned.

Such restraints are consciously designed for unlikely situations, “assuming something’s going to go slower (than expected) or something’s going to go wrong,” says Hudson. But no system can guard against everything, including the fact that a rider “could get out on almost any ride,” says Dave Omel, operations manager for Disneyland’s Adventureland/Frontierland.

Disneyland’s rule, therefore, is that “someone under 7 needs to be accompanied, on all attractions,” says Omel. On certain rides, adds Hudson, “they may need someone to assist them getting on or off, or to be moral or mental support,” or just help them exercise control.

That someone can also supply a judgment of whether a child can take the ride, and safely. “It’s difficult for us as amusement park operators to make that judgment,” says Hudson.

They can, however, make it clear that posted height limits don’t really guarantee that the ride’s appropriate for everyone that size. Parks could provide recommendations there as well, knowing as they do which rides are most “thrilling”--highest, fastest, most jolting. People who don’t know the ride, or don’t know children, may need to be told when parental guidance is needed.