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Water Slide That Decapitated Boy Violated Basic Design Standards

nytimes.com

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Re: Water Slide That Decapitated Boy Violated Basic Design Standards

#51

Post by jack_kc »

crazypyro wrote: post #32
teraflop wrote: post #4

The full indictment [1] is well worth reading. The most relevant sections for HN, in my opinion: > 35. [Designer Jeffrey] HENRY compared the construction of Verrückt to an arms race against rival waterparks. > 37. HENRY admitted that he was ignoring established industry safety standards because he felt he could redefine those standards with his own achievements. While describing his vision of how Verrückt would chang…

edit: The owner was arrested just today, so I had missed that. Can someone explain why they are charging the 29 year old director of operations who started as a lifeguard and had no formal training or connection to engineering/design and not one of the designers or owners, both of which are mentioned in the indictment multiple times? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me other than they needed to charge someone.

One of the co-owners was arrested today.

http://fox4kc.com/2018/03/26/schlitterbahn-co-owner-arrested...

Edit: remove amp link

Re: Water Slide That Decapitated Boy Violated Basic Design Standards

#52

Post by smitherfield »

crazypyro wrote: post #32
teraflop wrote: post #4

The full indictment [1] is well worth reading. The most relevant sections for HN, in my opinion: > 35. [Designer Jeffrey] HENRY compared the construction of Verrückt to an arms race against rival waterparks. > 37. HENRY admitted that he was ignoring established industry safety standards because he felt he could redefine those standards with his own achievements. While describing his vision of how Verrückt would chang…

edit: The owner was arrested just today, so I had missed that. Can someone explain why they are charging the 29 year old director of operations who started as a lifeguard and had no formal training or connection to engineering/design and not one of the designers or owners, both of which are mentioned in the indictment multiple times? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me other than they needed to charge someone.

The owner was just arrested as well,[1] and I'd bet that more will follow. My guess is the director of operations will get a plea deal in exchange for testifying against the others.

[1] http://www.kansascity.com/news/article206886324.html

Re: Water Slide That Decapitated Boy Violated Basic Design Standards

#53

Post by crazypyro »

Maybestring wrote: post #48
crazypyro wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

edit: The owner was arrested just today, so I had missed that. Can someone explain why they are charging the 29 year old director of operations who started as a lifeguard and had no formal training or connection to engineering/design and not one of the designers or owners, both of which are mentioned in the indictment multiple times? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me other than they needed to charge someone.

>Evidence suggests that the park planned to delay maintenance until the park closed for the season. When a safety feature was out of service, they decided to keep running it. That sounds like a director of operations decison. And much easier case to prove than design deficiency.

I think its likely that its an easier case to prove, but they are charging him with some things that take quite a high bar to prove.

For instance, the involuntary manslaughter charge is going to be hard to proof when the evidence that he was planning on going on the ride the same day is presented. They have to prove recklessness which includes proving the person knew their actions were likely to cause harm.

Also worth noting they are basically throwing the book at him with the number and severity of charges on the indictment.

Re: Water Slide That Decapitated Boy Violated Basic Design Standards

#55

Post by Pulcinella »

kazinator wrote: post #23
dawnerd wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, when it first opened and I saw the netting... that was a huge red flag. If you have to put netting up it's not safe end of story. The whole ride is just a lesson in what not to do, and hopefully other parks will learn from it.

... netting that is held together with metal hoops, through which you're shooting at high speeds. If that situation occurs for which the netting is there, it follows that the riders are hitting those hoops at full speed at an oblique angle. You're not going to somehow nicely land between those metal hoops and be caught just by the netting alone. (If that were possible, it doesn't seem safe, either, for that matter).…

Yes NASCAR and IndyCar oval tracks have catch fences around a at least part of the tracks. These are for the safety of the fans, not the drivers. Crashing into the fence will shred the car. This is how Dan Wheldon died.

Re: Water Slide That Decapitated Boy Violated Basic Design Standards

#56

Post by zipwitch »

hashbig wrote: post #42
djsumdog wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society has moved into a dangerous position of rewarding people for extreme risk taking, so long as it pans out. I'm not saying this guy wasn't responsible. He totally was, but things like this are going to keep happening the more we encourage disastrous risks. They use to happen all the time before we started focusing on safety standards for cars. There's a great 99% Invisible episode about the shift from believing…

The solution is not stop encouraging people to take extreme risks, it's to stop encouraging them to take risk that put others, and not them, at risk (and punish them if they do so). All of the great services and products we use today came from extreme risk taking, it's the corner stone of entrepreneurship.

I read that as meaning risks like "if my product isn't caught killing anyone in the next year, I'll be a billionaire!" type risks, not personal risks.

Re: Water Slide That Decapitated Boy Violated Basic Design Standards

#57

Post by crazypyro »

shock-value wrote: post #50
crazypyro wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. They settled for ~20 million shortly after it happened. The Kansas attorney general also took over the investigation. Still not understanding why the criminal indictment isn't for the designer or owner who are mentioned several times...

One of them seems to have also been arrested: http://www.kansascity.com/news/article206886324.html

Thanks, I missed that this came out today. This is what I was expecting.

Re: Water Slide That Decapitated Boy Violated Basic Design Standards

#58

Post by theresistor »

crazypyro wrote: post #39
HumanDrivenDev wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why most of us aren't real engineers. When real engineers are sloppy people die. When we are sloppy, our industry leaders defend it as being 'pragmatic'.

Its almost like completely different problems have completely different design constraints... There are plenty of "real" engineers who design stuff that have very little safety implications, such as optimizing electrical boards or minimizing costs in manufacturing.

Poor choice of example. "Electrical boards", aka PCBs, have a lot of safety requirements, and poorly designed ones are often implicated in electrical and battery fires.

Re: Water Slide That Decapitated Boy Violated Basic Design Standards

#59

Post by AnimalMuppet »

crazypyro wrote: post #53
Maybestring wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Evidence suggests that the park planned to delay maintenance until the park closed for the season. When a safety feature was out of service, they decided to keep running it. That sounds like a director of operations decison. And much easier case to prove than design deficiency.

I think its likely that its an easier case to prove, but they are charging him with some things that take quite a high bar to prove. For instance, the involuntary manslaughter charge is going to be hard to proof when the evidence that he was planning on going on the ride the same day is presented. They have to prove recklessness which includes proving the person knew their actions were likely to cause harm. Also wort…

Running it with a broken safety feature isn't recklessness? I think it is. Also gross negligence.

(IANAL, though. Legal definitions of those words may not match my intuitive understanding of them...)

Re: Water Slide That Decapitated Boy Violated Basic Design Standards

#60

Post by murph-almighty »

justherefortart wrote: post #41
duskwuff wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy shit. This is some Action Park [1] level irresponsibility here. A few other horrifying details: * Riders were restrained by Velcro straps. These frequently came loose. One rider broke several toes after his restraint came undone during a ride, forcing him to dig his feet into the corners of the raft. * The brake system on the ride was completely nonfunctional when the boy was killed, and had been that way for se…

My dad rode a cliffhanger type of slide at Action Park in the mid 80s. It had a plastic covering about 1/2 way down so you couldn't "fall off" the slide. I'm still amazed to this day he did it because he's afraid of heights. It was easily 50' high. Fortunately, the only downside was it was like getting an enormous enema. Those sled things that went down the concrete track, everyone has scars from those. Great memorie…

My dad recalls one summer where three people died on coasters and another incident where someone lit a (very unsafe as per fire code) haunted house on fire.

It's gotten considerably better since then though when I stopped going they were in the middle of a serious nickel-and-diming phase.

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