I think of roller coasters as a great way to release stress. Personally I love to ride coasters like the hulk, dueling dragons and so on. When something happens in a coaster you realize that they can be as dangerous as any other form of mechanical transport or entertainment. I short, coasters can be a dangerous proposition, but fuck it because life is short. I read in the news that a woman fell off a roller coaster in Six Flags Over Texas. What baffles me is that the park is acting like this was some freak accident. The roller coaster has had some history of malfunction, recently anyway.
Parks that bank their ticket sales on thrill rides really need look at their rides closely. This ride in Texas is known as " The Texas Giant" and just last year, according to reports, left riders stranded atop its 14 story peak. If something like this happened just last year, why in the hell was the ride not shut down for an extended period and properly inspected? If you look at the facts in this incident, it all reeks of improper maintenance. The woman that was killed was complaining that her harness was not properly secured.
You don't have to be an engineer specializing in coasters to know when a harness is loose. I remember riding the hulk and complaining about the same thing to an attendant, the difference is, the ride was not released until al harnesses were secured properly. Six Flags may have closed the ride now but it opened itself to a long, litigation and negative PR, nightmare. I think that this situation could have been avoided with a proper employment of safety protocols. It's baffling that a staple of american fun is now going to be associated with the neglect of safety and the death of an innocent person merely looking to have some clean fun.
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