Mod 6.3 Safety Recommendations
Roller coasters are already extremely safe, however, there is always room for improvement
During active operations it’s unlikely for a disastrous event
to occur, the continuous cycling of coaster trains will make any missing
individuals or trains obvious, however
during any downtime there may be some errors in coaster configuration.
The accident on the smiler in 2015 was due to a lack of
situational awareness when the 5th train was left on the track prior
to opening. A possible way of preventing this kind of accident from happening
again would be to have a “walkaround” of sorts prior to opening the coaster
after any stoppage, not necessarily having a person walk the entire length of
the track, just have someone go outside the station and visually follow the
track from the end of the lift hill to the last brake run beginning to end. If
a train was stuck on the track then the walkaround would catch it and prevent
the ride from opening.
If the ride were to have a section that runs underground at
any point, install either a means of seeing the section of track such as periscopes
or cameras. This will also reveal any serious problems with the track.
However this may not be entirely practical for all coasters,
large coasters like the famed Beast at Kings Island, indoor coasters like Tron The
Grid or Space Mountain at various Disney parks, or coasters that change directions
multiple times like Expedition Everest at Disneyland or Hagrid’s Motorbike Adventure
at Universal Studios have significant sightline inhibitions that aren’t easy to
get around to view the tracks. The way around this would be to have cameras
mounted along the entire length of the ride to the point that there will be no
section of track that isn’t visible.
To avoid operator fatigue, rotation should be performed for each team no less frequently than once per hour, furthermore, the ride crew should have more than enough water accessible during hot days to avoid physiological factors that could impact safe operations.
Benjamin, I like your recommendation, but I also think some sort of a monitoring system that has to be like approved after looking at the camera would be a good way to go about this as well. Even a combination of both could work. I do like your idea of rotation for the team, I do think this is something the recommend anyways at least at the parks I have been to.
ReplyDelete-Austin
Benjamin,
ReplyDeleteVery good recommendations for this issue. Yes, having cameras placed in certain areas would be helpful but what about putting a tracking GPS on each car? Think about it. At the end of the day when the ride is being closed for the night, the operator could do a quick system check and see if all cars are present and if they are not then they can just track down the whereabouts of the car. It would be more efficient than having someone walk the entire ride course to see where the missing car could be and with help from the camera, they can see why the car stopped there.