Schlitterbahn’s Tragic Slide
texasmonthly.com
Schlitterbahn’s Tragic Slide
1–10 of 115 posts
Re: Schlitterbahn’s Tragic Slide
#2Struggling to read this as the original Schlitterbahn in New Braunfels was pretty much the happiest place on earth to me as a kiddo.
Re: Schlitterbahn’s Tragic Slide
#3I 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 education beyond high school and never formally studied physics or engineering.
That alone isn't a bad thing. Maybe he's a visionary for these water rides. Provided you retain real engineers and take their advice, that is...
> an engineering firm ... issued a report suggesting ... there was a chance the raft would go airborne on the second hill. The ride opened anyway, with the weight range unchanged.
!!!
> But one of his lawyers acknowledged that Jeff didn’t have such training. He added, “Neither did Henry Ford, and he built the car.”
This is actually a mildly compelling argument. Thousands died in cars for decades [1] before cars competed on safety features and real safety regulations arrived. However, today, I think and hope that other water parks and amusement ride designers do conventionally use simulation and other methods to arrive at safe designs. It's not unreasonably expensive considering the total expenditure of the ride's design and construction.
States like Kansas should come up with some terribly simple low bars like requiring professionally licensed engineers to sign off on a ride's design and maintenance procedures as safe, and requiring annual inspections of ride service and incident records.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
Re: Schlitterbahn’s Tragic Slide
#4Maybe 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 grandfather of the person who first set these steps tangentially in motion was born, baby rattles were just becoming popular...” [119 paragraphs giving a detailed biography of the main person]
- “And now, the conclusion...”
Re: Schlitterbahn’s Tragic Slide
#5I was surprised to discover the article didn't mention any engineers that had worked on the design or implementation being sued for damages. Nor did the article mention any engineers who refused to construct or otherwise work on the tallest and most dangerous waterslide in the world.
Perhaps engineers in other fields are not so different from software engineers after all, published code of conduct aside.
Re: Schlitterbahn’s Tragic Slide
#6They killed a politician's 10 year old child with a badly designed water slide. If it hadn't been a elected official, they'd probably still be operating.
Re: Schlitterbahn’s Tragic Slide
#7My grandma lives not far from Schlitterbahn in New Braunfels. I remember one incident, probably back in 1990 when I was 5 or so, I was at my grandma's house and some cousins came down to go to Schlitterbahn.
They went without me (was perfectly fine enjoying myself on my grandma's 20 acre property) and they all came back later that night. But the next morning my one cousin, probably 12-14, stayed in the back room and never came out. Everyone kept bringing her food and water through out the day but she never came out.
I finally asked what was wrong to which my (somewhat crude mouthed) grandma only stated that she hurt herself on a ride and now her vagina is all swelled up and so she can't walk. Being 5yo I really wasn't sure what the heck that meant. Actually, I'm still not sure. But the best I can conjecture was she rode this one really tall water slide where you sit on a plastic sled and I assume the sled came out from under her and when she hit the "water brake", it flew in between her legs. But I don't know, and I'm not going to ask...
Re: Schlitterbahn’s Tragic Slide
#8I 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.
Re: Schlitterbahn’s Tragic Slide
#9I was surprised to discover the article didn't mention any engineers that had worked on the design or implementation being sued for damages. Nor did the article mention any engineers who refused to construct or otherwise work on the tallest and most dangerous waterslide in the world. Perhaps engineers in other fields are not so different from software engineers after all, published code of conduct aside.
Doesn't sound like they had any engineers. The article mentions only one engineering consultation just before it opened which warned that "a raft with three passengers weighing between 400 and 550 pounds could go airborne" and which was dismissed by the company.
Re: Schlitterbahn’s Tragic Slide
#10I was surprised to discover the article didn't mention any engineers that had worked on the design or implementation being sued for damages. Nor did the article mention any engineers who refused to construct or otherwise work on the tallest and most dangerous waterslide in the world. Perhaps engineers in other fields are not so different from software engineers after all, published code of conduct aside.
[deleted]