Amusement Park Horror

I love the Roller Coaster. And, yes, I have gotten nauseous on them twirly-spinny rides, but mostly no. Mostly I just like ‘em.

I don’t like lines. That’s about the worst thing about amusement parks. Except maybe getting killed by a ride. That would be pretty high in contention among worst things at amusement parks.

Last week an amusement park worker in New York got killed by a ride. The article I read was vague on how it happened. She was getting off work but told her replacement she was going to lock in a last batch of riders. The new guy started up the ride. Did he start it up before she’d gotten out of the way? The article says he shut down the ride as soon as he “noticed [her] still on the ride,” which implies she’d plopped into a seat herself. But she “already had been thrown from it” before the big machine could stop.

I’m not one to dwell on the details of other people’s deadly accidents, okay? But I live with an employment law expert. And he comes home yesterday and tells me he had to post a reply to some “expert” who sniffed that this accident “highlights the limits of workplace safety laws” as though such laws were powerless before “human error” … thus, what, we’re better off without them?

Anyway, the original post appears here with Kent’s reply below it.

“An off-duty (perhaps tired) worker was improperly loading passengers (late arrivals) on equipment that was not using all appropriate protective equipment [this was acknowledged in the news item] (precaution not followed) in a park that (recently) is killing over one person per year.”

How, K’s saying, is this not an example of a preventable accident? This is the very thing well-enforced laws would make less likely.