Rattles, Rolls and Risks

Getting shaken, rattled and rolled is the fun of riding roller coasters, but we still have a lot to learn about the health effects of today’s rides, which are much bigger and scarier than the thrill rides of an earlier era.

Earlier this month a young woman died of a ruptured brain aneurysm, hours after losing consciousness on Montezuma’s Revenge at Knott’s Berry Farm. The ride takes a mere three seconds to accelerate to 60 mph and whips through loops up to seven stories high. In June, a woman died after riding the Goliath roller coaster at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia. She had suffered from hypertension-related heart disease, and she too died from a ruptured brain aneurysm. A third brain injury-related death occurred in July at Six Flags Marine World in Vallejo.

A timely study by a national research organization, the Brain Injury Assn., looks into the frightening possibility that amusement park rides trigger brain injuries. It is studying 30 to 50 cases in which thrill seekers reportedly were hurt. While stalling or blocking meaningful regulation, the theme park industry hasn’t hesitated to introduce rides that indulge customers’ ever-growing appetite for ersatz danger. Now there is reason to suspect that the risks to life and limb are all too real.

With California’s new oversight of theme park safety under 1999 legislation and with Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and others scrutinizing park rides as a consumer product safety issue, the need for good analyses and information is urgent.

The state recently added wiggle room to an administrative proposal on what kinds of accidents the parks must report. The unequivocal language in the earlier draft regulations should be restored.

State investigators last week allowed Knott’s Berry Farm to reopen its roller coaster, saying there was no evidence at the autopsy to suggest that the ride contributed to the woman’s death. Maybe so. We hope so. Still, you don’t have to be a medical examiner to wonder exactly how these stressful new rides do affect patrons, especially those with preexisting problems.

The brain is a delicate instrument about which we are learning more all the time. Riders need to be made aware of potential risks as we discover them.

Meanwhile, we all might do some risk assessment. The victims have not been old and fragile. Two of the women who died this summer were in their 20s. Until good data are released and good studies completed, thrill seekers might look at those big drops and loop-the-loops and ask themselves: “Hey, is this really worth it?”