Roller coaster 'Cobra' crashes at Tivoli Friheden

Originally posted by gouldy

But poor maintenance would not cause a part that had been correctly designed to fail in such a way after just a week.

every part of a coaster must be checked every half a day, if there was a part that was defective in manufactoring then it would of mot just simpley snaped or broken, it would have been week for the duration of the opening and testing. this is somthing the maintanence should of picked up on or noticed somthing was wrong thats all im saying.

but yes i pretty much agree that it was a manufactoring fault or a design fault but befor a proper judgement can be made we need to know what and where it broke

[gouldy]

yeah, take a steel shaft for example, maybe it's a pin that holds a component in place for example. Fractures beneath the surface of the material can only really be detected in the manufacturing stage. This could not be seen by maintenance and would go un noticed... until a week into the life of the machine of course, when the pin would finally shear causing a component to become free causing ouchies... for example, lol.

Totally agree with gouldy, 100%. Maintenance couldnt be expected to notice a hairline fracture or anything like that within a week. And then the question would come up, if there was a fracture, why did it appear so soon? ---> Problem with manufacturing process? ---> fault of manufacturer.

[gouldy]

... or poor design.

This is the kind of thing I work with all day long, material stresses and such, slight miscalculations can have terrible consequences, hence factor of safety (components on coasters should have a factor of safety of 8 i.e. the component in question is 8 times stronger than required). This in theory means that problems like this should never occur, even if someone has been slightly clumsy with their calculations, so for something like this to happen, you'd have to suggest that someone's gonna get fired!

the problem with a hairline fracture is that regulations dictate that all parts of the train and track must be x-rayed to check for crack. however it could of happened in transit so blame the truck driver

you never know when something like this is going to happen. Guess thats another reason they are called thrill rides.

[gouldy]

With things like this, it's usually a chain of errors that happen in coincidence, that lead to the problem occurring, it may very well have been unavodable. Until we hear the result of any inquests, I guess we probably shouldn't blame anyone actually

By the looks of this, this was Ride Teks first, and last roller coaster. Open for only two weeks and crashing. No park in their right mind would go with this company again.

http://www.ridetek.it/en/news_cobra.htm

[jayman]

http://translate.google.com/translate?u ... l=da&tl=en
this article suggests that the accidnt may be the result of a bolt that was replaced not long before the incident..

^Try posting the link again; it's real messed up.

[jayman]

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.roll ... 16522511fb

Yeah, thats what I ment with bad maintenance.