Stonewalling: the Worst PR
When a woman died of a burst blood vessel after riding Magic Mountain’s Goliath roller coaster June 2, doctors and safety advocates renewed their scrutiny of the risks that such rides may pose to the brain. Bad timing for Disneyland, which stands accused of hoarding precisely the sort of data that would shed light on the possible dangers of ever wilder, whipsawing amusement park rides.
When a San Diego woman said her brain had hemorrhaged after riding Disneyland’s Indiana Jones Adventure in 1998, her headaches were only beginning. Last month, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Madeleine Flier became so exasperated at Disneyland’s incomplete response to requests for information about similar injuries that she accused the park of “bad faith.” She fined Disney for the second time this year. In an earlier case, it took exhaustive legal haranguing and a fine to make Disney reveal a closely guarded log filled with hundreds of complaints about the Indiana Jones ride.
Officials of the company have taken a few steps to be more forthcoming, but the park’s longstanding practice is to provide the least possible information, and then only under legal duress.
For years, the entire theme park industry in California stalled as a strategy, postponing the release of information and fighting attempts to enact legislation that would require disclosures about ride safety. Legislation passed in 1999 changed some of that, but getting precise regulations adopted has been difficult.
Both Indiana Jones cases involved questions of brain injury. The fatal aneurysm on Goliath is again focusing attention on this complicated but important area of amusement park safety. Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) has initiated the compilation of early data, and medical journals have poked at the issue. But there are no conclusive studies to date linking brain injuries to rides. It’s also hard to know whether someone had a preexisting condition, or whether a problem that surfaced later actually occurred on a park visit.
More research is needed. Having good records of accidents or injuries inevitably must be a key part of any organized attempt to better understand whether head injuries can result when amusement park rides “push the envelope.”
A company ought to recognize a liability to its corporate image beyond its legal exposure. Disney parks just endured embarrassing publicity when labor negotiations revealed that workers portraying such characters as Cinderella and Donald Duck complained of being forced to share company-issued underwear. The alleged insult to these workers: pubic lice or scabies. As appalling as these charges are, patron injury--especially brain injury--is far worse. Disney and its competitors need to make their safety data available, for the sake of patrons who say they were injured and for experts looking more broadly at public safety concerns.
