Accident on the Texas Cyclone

http://news24houston.com/content/top_st ... ArID=17140

Well, I guess I won't be riding the Texas Cyclone one last time this year. I just found out about yesterday's accident. I was toying with the idea of going to AstroWorld yesterday too, so this could've happened to me, if I had been there. Now I'm not so sure I even wanna go next weekend like I decided I would, but I do wanna get one last dose of SWAT this year, so I'll probably go anyway. But I'm gonna be alot more scared than normal!

P.S.: I'm really not sure if I should ride the Cyclone anymore either, even if it is open when I go. That ride has claimed more lives than any other coaster I know of. I don't know the exact body count, but I know it's alot higher than normal. At least 2 people have fallen out of it, and several employees were killed on it when they got the bright idea to sneak a few rides after hours, forgetting that they had switched the track to enter the storage shed, which at that time ended in an abrupt drop of about 25FT. They made the path to the storage shed and back a complete circuit after that, but that accident elevated the body count by several people at once, so the Cyclone my very well be the deadliest coaster on the entire planet.

[gouldy]

OH MY GOD!

The link doesnt work for me

Here's the story as it appears on the page that I linked to for you:

AstroWorld accident leaves seven injured
10/20/2003 10:54 PM
By: Sabrina Goel


It was supposed to be a fun night out for Krystal Akridge and her boyfriend. But Sunday night quickly turned into a nightmare after an accident on a ride at Six Flags AstroWorld.

"The last pass of the car a board fell, and I saw it," Akridge says. "It was coming down and it was rotating, and I kind of ducked and he was able to push it off of me. I did see it hit other people in front of us. It was very, very scary."

But what makes this accident even worse, is that it could have been avoided.

"I rode the roller coaster and I had my hands up in the air and when I rode it, as we came around the turnaround, my arm hit a board. So, when we got back to the station, I got off the coaster and I told the ride operator that I hit a board during the ride. I told her someone is going to get hurt from the boards hanging down," Chris Low says.

Texas Cyclone is one of the oldest rides at AstroWorld. It is made entirely out of wooden planks.

It was one of these boards that came loose and crashed onto the riders.

"We're inspecting the ride trying to determine exactly what happened to determine the cause of the incident," AstroWorld spokeswoman Daryl Freedman says. "We've got our maintainence teams out there working on the ride and we've also got an expert on wooden coasters coming down from our corporate office to assist as well."

But that does little for Matt Brown, who was injured on the ride. Knowing that someone else tried to warn AstroWorld makes him angry.

"They didn't even give it a second thought about letting us go and continue riding, and we saw what the consequences were," Brown says. "It could have been a lot worse, but we shouldn't have been in that position at all."

AstroWorld will be open for Fright Fest over the weekend. However, the status of the Texas Cyclone ride has yet to be determined.

A total of seven people were hurt, including an 8-year-old girl.

Three people were taken to the hospital, but have since been released.

Blimey for puttin ure hands up

i don't want to go on it any more.

I will ride it again, accidents do happen and I have never had a bad ride on it myself (been riding it sense I was at least 8 every year (rode every way it has been, including b/c the first modifacations), few times a year, now im 30. As for putting the hands up on the cyclone well that is kind of what its all about. Now I will say that the workers should have shut the ride down when they were told and had maintanece check out the ride. I hope that the ride comes back and has many more years of running

don't be swayed by stupid human propaganda... if they keep hyping up all of these accidents and mechanical breakdowns, roller coasters may become extinct because the GP will think they are not safe. That's the third big coaster accident this year.

I agree cjd, I know of two others that have involved death (which this one did not have).

IMO, the ride ops shoulda inspected the ride. Glad no one was killed and all. Like mentioned in the article: the accident coulda been prevented and wasnt