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If I’m reading this correctly, the ride opened in 2014 but the kid was decapitated in 2016. So not only did they rush its construction but they had two years to fix it and chose not to. Incredible.
Or, in two years, they never realized that they needed to fix it. You decide whether that's better or worse...
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>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…
Often the safety of something for a particular person depends on their knowledge of the danger. For example there is a board that is failing on my deck. It is possible that it could give way leading to someone twisting their ankle or even breaking a bone. Yet I walk on my deck everyday--because I know to avoid stepping on that board until I get around to learning how to fix it and doing so.
Maybe he knew the places where it was more dangerous than well designed and built similar rides, and what to do or not do at those places to minimize the risk?
"I am afraid that this will have a chilling effect against innovation in this area" is the sort of way that software engineers respond to similar problems in their space. We need to hold ourselves to at least this good a standard.
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>"If we actually knew how to do this, and it could be done that easily, it wouldn't be that spectacular." The same logic applies for a majority of cryptocurrency and gig economy startups.
Most of which don't put lives at risk.
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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).…
Whats interesting, and where they probably for the idea for the netting (they have one in the park): https://www.whitewaterwest.com/products/master-blaster/
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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...)
Disclaimer: This isn't legal advice. The legal definition of recklessness requires that the person know (or should know) that the ride is dangerous. Legally, it is more difficult to prove when that person took actions that suggest they did not think it was dangerous. To your point about broken safety features: One could potentially even argue that the brake isn't a safety feature. It could be there to help riders tha…
While in general safety features can require a competent user, e.g. the brakes in your car, in the case of amusement park rides that allow children that does indeed not make sense.
But... I would argue that this is just evidence of substandard design of the speed control system. There is ample evidence of a history of injuries due to excessive speed.
Ugh, it says they rushed the design and build in order to impress a Travel Channel show/producer.. (Not putting this at the feet of the TV channel, just so insanely wrong priorities on the part of the park)
Seems similar to the one who shot and killed her boyfriend (husband?) in front of their kid for a YouTube prank.
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…
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…
> They use to happen all the time before we started focusing on safety standards [...]
Maybe it's seen a bit of a resurgence recently, but history (and the attendant selection bias) has always rewarded risk-takers whose risks paid off, while letting the rest die off-screen.