Lap Bar Focus of Disneyland Injury Probe

State investigators are focusing on the design of Disneyland’s Roger Rabbit Car Toon Spin in their probe of a Friday accident that critically injured a 4-year-old boy, an official close to the case said Monday.

A source with the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, who asked not to be identified, said investigators are looking at the restraint system on the ride, a simple lap bar, and the design of the vehicle, including the cutout opening on a spinning ride.

“You’d figure that ergonomically it wasn’t designed to restrain a wiggly child,” said the source. The department investigates serious amusement-park accidents under a law that took effect this year.

The child, identified Monday as Brandon Zucker of Canyon Country, was caught under a ride car Friday night--his mother’s 40th birthday--after he toppled out of a Roger Rabbit taxicab on the first portion of the ride.

The boy was pinned under a second car, which carried his father, David Zucker, and a grandparent. The boy--who has undergone two surgeries to repair a collapsed lung and damage to his diaphragm, spleen and liver--remained on life support Monday at UCI Medical Center in Orange.

“He’s a tough guy,” said Dr. Marianne Cinat, a trauma surgeon at UCI. “But he’s not out of the woods yet.”

Brandon also suffered a pelvic fracture when he was bent into a sitting position under the taxi car.

One of the things investigators will be looking at is whether the mother, Victoria Zucker, was sitting on the closed-in side of the car and Brandon next to a cutout opening. Officials have said they don’t know where the two were sitting.

Disneyland spokesman Ray Gomez declined to discuss the adequacy of lap bars or what might have gone wrong Friday night.

The Roger Rabbit ride remained shuttered Monday. Gomez said the ride would be closed until Cal-OSHA completes its investigation--perhaps later this week.

However, several amusement ride design experts have said that single lap bars can be insufficient, particularly when a small child is riding with an adult. They also said the smallest or lightest person should always be placed on the closed-in side, so that the child can’t wiggle out of a seat.

The industry trend is away from common lap bars on bench seats and toward individual restraints, said Bob Ochsner, a spokesman for Knott’s Berry Farm. Knott’s has only two rides set up that way--Kingdom of the Dinosaurs and Rocky Road Trucking Company--and the policy on those is to seat children or smaller people on the inside, away from the opening, he said.

Gomez said Disneyland does not have such seating policies.

A federal consumer agency has investigated 11 accidents in nine years involving lap bars. Two resulted in fatalities.

“We’re very concerned about the spike in accidents that we’ve seen over the last three years,” said Jane Francis, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Consumer Protection and Product Safety Commission.