Originally published at: Behold the horsecoaster | Boing Boing
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Instead of horses, when they finally do recreate some dinosaurs on that island, this is how they should be be deployed. 
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Millionaires and Billionaires: The Company is gong through hard times and we’re going to have to cut your pay and benefits.
Oh, have you seen my new horsey roller coaster? It eliminates so many jobs!
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I couldn’t get through the whole thing. All that kept coming to mind was, “It stops moving immediately if any horse is injured, right?” 
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It’s really hard for me to visualize any safe way to stop that thing in the event of an injury. They’re all tethered together so you can’t just stop one horse, and galloping horses don’t exactly stop on a dime.
(Edit to add: on the FAQ section of the https://kurtsystems.co.uk.faq website they don’t really answer the question “what if a horse falls” except to say “no horses have fallen yet.”)
A number of high profile horse deaths at my local racetrack have convinced me that there’s probably no way to do this sport without unacceptably high risk to the animals. Professional horse racing needs to end.
Edit to add: upon reading the headline I was really hoping for something that the horses could ride. That’s not a crazy idea! In my town, back in the late 1800’s, there was this cool horse/mule drawn streetcar that would go up a slightly sloped road. When it was time to go back downhill they unhitched the horse and put it in the back to ride down via gravity.
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Maybe they could look into finding a humane replacement?
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How creepy. There are so many ways this contraption is a bad idea.
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Imagine a themepark roller coaster where you have to walk up the track. Betting on animal abuse had to end.
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It really says something about an industry when strapping beings into a machine that forces them to run is considered a humane advancement.
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There are serious problems with the industry beyond animal abuse, too. Most jockeys are paid slave wages, with half making under $12k a year.
https://www.thoroughbredracing.com/articles/how-do-so-many-jockeys-survive-earnings-so-little/
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I have an idea. Let’s remove the horses from this device, decouple each unit, automate the entire thing, have it driven by a random number generator that determines which unit crosses the finish line first, and then let all the gamblers bet on that.
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But what about" Animal Error"?
And “Machine Error”?
2 thirds of the errors remain.
I believe the word is “brake”.
So you believe that if 10 thoroughbred horses harnessed together are galloping at 30 or 40 mph, and one suddenly gets a bone fracture or torn ligament causing it to fall, that the machine or human operator will immediately somehow see this and just “apply the brakes” without the system dragging the horse along further than it would if it was running free? Even the machine’s manufacturer doesn’t claim this system is monitoring the legs of each horse, and it doesn’t answer the question of “what if a horse falls?” other than to say “none of the horses have fallen yet.”
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The only way I could imagine it could conceivably protect an injured horse is to have a mechanism for lifting it off the ground while the contraption slows down at a safe speed for the other horses. But it doesn’t appear designed for that.
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Horsecoaster? Do horses leave rings?
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mistakes can be costly
Yeah! Yeah, I’d imagine! Those poor, poor horse owners
The tether connecting horse to structure has flexibility, and when pulled too roughly (due to falling or boltering horse) will trigger the braking system. The horse will fall “normally” and fall out of the holding paddock. It is not dragged by the tether, which breaks away. The system will stop quickly enough so that the oncoming paddock behind the falling horse is not struck. Obviously any human (and there are 2 to a horse) can also trigger the brake.
If it turns out this system, whatever its flaws, results in fewer injuries to the horse and the rider.
