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Texas Church Carnival Death


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I'm wondering if the articles' use of the word "seat belt" is referring to the large lap restraint? Our Scrambler, a similar ride, has a seat belt and a door/restraint, but it could be argued that the seat belt is redundant (Scramblers operated for decades without them).

 

I could understand if this accident was the result of a malfunctioning restraint/door, but I'm curious how it occurred if it was just a broken seat belt.

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Crazy, hate to hear that.

 

Should've been simple, belts broke, cars closed, period. Move to another car or wait till next ride. But that's not the only major 

thing that stands out to me. That thing must have been FLYIN to throw someone out, had to be. I'm sure most of us have been 

on a scrambler (I see no difference between the two besides looks) at the very most the fastest one I've ever been on will pin ya

against the outside of the car. But to lift some out of the car, completely? 

 

Kinda hard to wrap my head around this one.........

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A good rule to follow with amusement safety devices is that if you wouldn't be comfortable allowing a member of your own family on a particular seat of a ride because something isn't working 100% correctly, don't put anyone else's family member in it.

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Crazy, hate to hear that.

 

Should've been simple, belts broke, cars closed, period. Move to another car or wait till next ride. But that's not the only major 

thing that stands out to me. That thing must have been FLYIN to throw someone out, had to be. I'm sure most of us have been 

on a scrambler (I see no difference between the two besides looks) at the very most the fastest one I've ever been on will pin ya

against the outside of the car. But to lift some out of the car, completely? 

 

Kinda hard to wrap my head around this one.........

 

Even worse they were the only riders.  The rest of the ride was open they could have easily moved to another car.  Reuters Video.  

 

There is no excuse for this, if the safety system is not working 100% no one should be sitting there period.

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Huh, I didn't see that. So does that mean none of the belts worked??

 

This one is just mind-boggling. And sounds to me totally unnecessary.

 

EDIT: I just went back and reread the first article, did miss they we're the only ones on it. 

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My college actually had a fair this past Friday and they had a similar ride (also called Sizzler, it's exactly like the one in the video). There were no seatbelts, just the large lap restraints. No one was flung from the ride.

 

So there's a few possibilities here:

 

  1. The people who were ejected were very lightweight (not likely, as the girls were 15 and 16)
  2. Riders can be ejected from any ride without seatbelts (also not likely, as numerous rides have operated without seatbelts for many years but had them added as a redundant safety feature, while others operate to this day without seatbelts)
  3. The ride is a different model of ride than the one I rode that has a seatbelt rather than a lap bar, and the seatbelt happened to be broken.
  4. The cabin had a broken restraint latch and needs to be repaired.
  5. The ride has a design flaw.

3 and 4 are the most likely, followed by 5, then followed distantly by 1 and 2.

 

With 1, add weight requirements. Height requirements are hopefully already a thing here, but maybe they need to be heightened.

 

2 probably doesn't need to be considered (although adding seatbelts to rides that don't have them isn't a bad thing!)

 

With both 3 or 4, the cabin should have been taken out of service and blocked by yellow tape.

 

With 4, I assume that seatbelts were definitely on the ride as well, as it's weird to refer to a lap bar as a seatbelt. If just the seatbelt was broken, I don't think anything would have happened, but I would take the cabin out of service anyway just as a precaution.

 

With 5, obviously the whole ride should be taken out of service.

 

In any case, this is definitely operator error, and I'd even call it criminal negligence.

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