Rollercoaster malfunctions, leaving passengers suspended upside down for hours

[Pectins]

Cross purposes … I was talking about the ride in the original post, not the Cedar Point ride mentioned in the thread.

[moortaktheundea]

@jaded

Yes, I’m sure they use check lists, and they have other people come and cross check their work, and they run safety tests and inspections every morning.

@jaded

Yes, I’m sure they use check lists, and they have other people come and cross check their work, and they run safety tests and inspections every morning.

Having worked in that industry when I was younger, nope, not even a little. The rides were frequently handled by people barely hanging onto the edge of society and the only time the rides got what you could count as a good inspection was during the off-season. The rides were frequently decades old and the fixes added over the years could generously be described as improvised.

@NukeML

Alternate point of view: the carnival rides that get taken apart and put back together frequently will by necessity get more inspections than a static roller coaster.

At the larger fixed location parks there are daily track walk inspection by staff and in the case of my home state Ohio, annual inspections by the state and a sprinkling of random inspections. Mobile rides were frequently assembled in an hour by a hungover dude running on a few hours of sleep and the inspection is conducted by the same people. When I was a kid, they’d sometimes send us to check for missing cotter pins. If too much of the crew dipped out mid-season, locals would be hired for day labor to get things running.

@VeronicaConnor

Alternate alternate point of view- have you seen carnies? That profession doesn’t exactly attract the most sober people at the peak of their careers. Though they are at the high point of their careers in many cases. That’s who’s puttin’ those rides together

(I keed, I keed)

You may joke, but for a few of the operations I knew, every stereotype was true. At the end of the day it is a lightly regulated, itinerant, cash based industry. That has a way of drawing a certain crowd.

[VeronicaConnor]

@moortaktheundea

You may joke, but for a few of the operations I knew, every stereotype was true. At the end of the day it is a lightly regulated, itinerant, cash based industry. That has a way of drawing a certain crowd.

Yah, I was hoping to say exactly that without getting too judgy about it. Lots of great and interesting people do that job, but it does draw a certain cross-section of society. Not bad people, but maybe not people you want to trust your complex life-saving machinery to either.