51–60 of 115 posts
When I was a kid, we went to TX (I'm from Germany) and everyone recommended going to New Braunfels because it's so German. We were quite shocked to see how german it was. It seemed like a hideout for traditional german values (as in conquering Poland) - no pleasant memory.
"Instead of using fundamental mathematical and physics calculations to design and build the ride, the two men had “rushed forward relying almost entirely on crude trial-and-error methods.” And although they realized that their finished product “guaranteed that rafts would occasionally go airborne in a manner that could severely injure or kill the occupants,” they went ahead and opened the ride anyway." Yep. All you h…
[1] https://www.texasmonthly.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/HR_S...
In terms of real-world testing, not even 100,000 tests (or maybe ~33,300 if each raft had 3 people on it) exposed the problem.
Maybe as a way to help compartmentalism from what the article is describing, I keep wondering: why do “long form” stories all seem to follow the same script? - Introduction to the subject - Introduction to the “characters” - “Dramatic thing began to happen, with seemingly innocuous steps taken towards the unforeseen conclusion, but then, as the thing begins to unfo—“ - “Back in 1823, when the ancestor of the grandfat…
This article seems to romanticize the ride's creators. Why? They built a ride that injured and killed from their own intentional neglect. The men should be regarded as murderers.
When I was a kid, we went to TX (I'm from Germany) and everyone recommended going to New Braunfels because it's so German. We were quite shocked to see how german it was. It seemed like a hideout for traditional german values (as in conquering Poland) - no pleasant memory.
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When I was a kid, we went to TX (I'm from Germany) and everyone recommended going to New Braunfels because it's so German. We were quite shocked to see how german it was. It seemed like a hideout for traditional german values (as in conquering Poland) - no pleasant memory.
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I love capitalism and the idea behind laissez faire. I still think it might be the least bad thing out there but I keep coming back to stuff like this where people just don't act in their own long-term (or even short-term sometimes) interest. Caleb's gone, many people who lived in Grenfell Tower are gone, and now I think many markets where safety is critical deserve some good regulation. > He never got a conventional…
Is it really possible that no licensed engineers were involved with the project, and that none of them signed off on anything significant? Based on the article, it sounds like at least one licensed engineer noticed that rafts were leaving the track.
> What’s more, according to court documents, the investigators learned that on July 3, 2014, one week before the ride’s grand opening, an engineering firm hired by Jeff and Schooley to perform accelerometer tests on Verrückt’s rafts had issued a report suggesting that if the combined weight of the three passengers in a raft was between 400 and 550 pounds—the weight Jeff and Schooley had agreed was appropriate—there was a chance the raft would go airborne on the second hill. The ride opened anyway, with the weight range unchanged.
In the end, no expert vouched for the ride’a safety.
> Kansas City reporters began digging. They quickly learned that their state, like Texas, allows water parks to be self-inspected. (Under the headline “The making of Schlitterbahn’s Verrückt water slide: Too much, too fast?” a Kansas City Star article concluded that “the ultimate safety of [Verrückt] mostly began and ended with those inspired to build it.”)
Why the fuck was this on "Hacker News", let alone at the #2 spot?
