Army Veteran Dies At Darien Lake

^^^You misread what I wrote tool. The unpreventable force is the negative public feedback when someone dies on a roller coaster.

this is not 100% the ride ops fault unless there are parts of the story which havent been told yet, shurly some of the blame should be put to the veterain himself for not informing the ops of his dissability therefor not letting them interact.
the intamin handbook does have a saftey rule that no person with less than one arm or less than one leg may ride.
it really sounds to me like there was somthing that wasent comunicated here and to be fair unless i am shown or told otherwise im sorta thinking it was his own fault (if he was wearing prosthetics). i know i will probally have alot of backlash for this view of this accident but as i see it unless all of the story is shown i carnt say yes its his/her/there fault. not all blame should be on the park some needs to be with the guests and to realise they also have responcability to be safe

I agree. While the ops need to enforce safety rules...riders also have a responsibility to follow them as well.

[Mikey]

All of these rumors about what happened are just guest hearsay. Until somebody puts this in a sworn affidavit before a judge, or the investigators release the final report, I think we can safely call this an accident and not an act of negligence or negligent homicide. I can only imagine how the operators must feel at this point, I can remember how I felt after seeing the after math of a guest drowning on the roaring rapids. My outlook on things hasn't really been the same since.

I tell this to my crews everyday, aside from operating the expensive and dangerous machinery safely and efficiently, a successful ride operator has the unconscious ability to protect the guest from themselves. When your are at the controls, the guest on board are your friends, your family. What ever decision you make, you make sure that everyone comes back.


When I was an operator at Mr Freeze many years ago I had an incident similar to this, except the attendants at the time weren't Jr. operators, they were full time supervisors or higher.

It was just after the ride reopened and the OTSRs were removed in favor of the lap bars. A guest walked through the regular queue line with only a cane and had two prosthetic legs. Only we didn't know this at the time. He wore long pants because he said people made comments about his man made legs.

Being hell week we were running two sides with minimal staff trying to cycle the ride as fast as we possibly could. This was back when you could move both tables over at the same time so we could send a train every 52 seconds on the money.

This guest not only managed to board the ride and take a seat, but we also managed to move the train from load to launch, and had acknowledged the launch all the way up until I aborted it at the last possible second. The only thing that kept me from launching that train was the fact that he was sitting in the front seat, and when I did my final visual check of the train he happened to scratch his leg and I saw the shiny metal connecting rod leading into his shoe.

These types of incidents are common, sometimes they are caught and become no-issues. Other times, they unfortunately become headlines.


We do not allow operators to assist with loading or unloading disabled guest from the ride. Any guest with disabilities is strongly encouraged to visit the guest relations office for information about what they can and cannot ride with their condition. All guest are responsible for reading all safety signage and placards and listening to ride operator instructions.

Correctly put Mikey...and most certainly there was no intent here, just a very unfortunate accident regardless of any "fault."

[Mikey]

They released the accident report today on this, it has been reported that the operators were at fault because they failed to enforce ride safety policies.

That's a shame. I was at Waldameer yesterday and an older gentleman and his wife were behind me and he said "I hope you come back, a guy died up at Darien Lake the other week because he fell out." I explained to him the situation and how ABC made the story out to make all coasters seem dangerous and he even said "Wow I guess they didn't want to tell the whole story, shame on them for skimping on some of the details."

Just goes to show you what some honesty can do, but on topic more, it is a shame to hear that the Ops are going to be at fault here. Hopefully this does not hurt the park too bad.

Originally posted by Mikey

They released the accident report today on this, it has been reported that the operators were at fault because they failed to enforce ride safety policies.

Do they need to be held responsible? Absolutely.

However, at least in Ohio, it is part of our LAWS that you follow ALL posted ride regulations. Why bother with any of that if you are just going to take the fall for it anyways? I understand, its their job to enforce it but its also the LAW.

I cant do 100 down the highway, get into an accident and then claim "Hey, there wasnt a cop there to enforce it. You cant hold me accountable for killing a family because my SUV demolished their Honda"

Ya know?

[jayman]

i agree, 100 per cent operators fault..