I watched the one about the waterslide (at Schlitterbahn) that decapitated a 10 year old kid in front of two women. It was the tallest waterslide, was built in like 1/3rd of time, and the guys who built it had never made a waterslide before. Their safety testing was trial and error, which showed the raft fly off the ride at the first hill multiple times. Their solution was to put a net with hoop supports, which is what cut the kid's head off.
The only positive was that the kid was the son of a Kansas Republican, and Republicans only care about safety hazards when it affects them directly, so there actually were consequences.
Still an awful thing though. I live in KC and remember that news.
I also remember drying through Kansas and seeing the freakishly tall slide.
Don't forget they are staffed by one teenager when the operating manual calls for 2 adults and a supervisor.
Disneyland had a death due to poor management at one point, probably others. The one I’m referencing the Columbia on the Rivers of America. It’s not in the story, but my recollection was that it was a new manager (who shadow each attraction for a day or two when they’re promoted) that directed the cast to tie down when it was going too fast. The momentum ripped up the cleat which practically amputated the leg of the cast member and flew into a guest’s face, killing them.
Just flexing my useless Disney info, but kinda making the point that the ship itself was well built/designed, but management was shit.
Brutal.
Yeah, most cast members have at least one harrowing story. I had a man try and commit suicide in my section during guest control so had to create a perimeter for paramedics. We also had a bomb scare because one of the ODV kids created a dry ice bomb and put it in a trash can. Hecking wild.
I remember that dry ice bomb. I was friends with a security manager then and heard the kid drew terrorism charges for that. Which is a shame because it was really just idiocy and not thinking rather than anything malicious.
I only had a couple fights and one heart attack outside the general normal chaos and minor injuries that comes with the public. But I was in stores on main street, so it wasn't so harrowing.
As for the sailing ship Columbia, iirc it was manager who took over when there was a shortage of cast members to keep the attraction open.
Oh yeah, the heart attacks. I was in DCA (attractions), but worked with people who were at DLR before I was born haha. A lead I was friends with had to manage a heart attack situation in a bathroom next to his attraction. Life (and death) happens ¯\(ツ)/¯
Oh yea. It was kind of funny, I was working and it was right after they changed to split 911. It used to go to the local security office and then they'd call 911 if it required more than Disney resources. After a lawsuit they made it work like you expect to go direct to emergency services.
I had a cast member run into my store and ask if a heart attack goes to the local security office to send a nurse or 911 to send an ambulance. I had him call 911 to get the ambulance and I went to get the AED and head to the guest. It always kind of made me chuckle that someone would have that doubt on whether or not 911 was the right thing to call for a heart attack.
I don't ride amusement park rides for exactly that reason. The motion and speed and such don't bother me, and it's not that I get dizzy or nauseous or anything. It's that I'm hyper-aware of the fact that all it would take to kill me is for one little mechanical part to fail or be incorrectly installed.
I actually fixate on specific parts - the whole time the ride's going, I'm looking around and thinking, "If that pin shears, I'm dead. If that bolt wasn't tightened down, I'm dead. If that flange twists, I'm dead."
There's nothing even vaguely fun about that.
Even if you were to ride an amusement park rollercoaster every single day for the rest of your life, you would be a couple magnitudes more likely to die on the car ride to or back from the park than by a malfunction of the attraction. Most malfunctions will result on the car stopping on an horizontal section then getting evacuated on foot, and that would be scary but you wouldn't be in any danger. You are in greater danger of harm or death stepping into a bathtub for a shower than on a rollercoaster cart riding at 120 km/h and pulling some Gs. Humans suck at intuitively assessing risk.
Yes - I know all of that. And it doesn't make the slightest difference.
You're not THE Wat Dabney? The inventor of the inverted firkin?!
The very same.
Homo sapiens is good at building rollercoasters, not probability especially vis‑à‑vis emotion. And they aren’t very good at rollercoasters either.
I take it you don't go near cars or other vehicles either, then? Lol
I can manage cars, but I have a sort of mental block I've had to adopt to stop myself thinking about tires blowing out. It helps that I can't see them.
I generally only ride elevators if it's more floors than I can comfortably climb stairs, and I don't like them. Given the opportunity, I always take the stairs. And I spend a lot of my time on elevators specifically trying not to think about the arrangement of pulleys and cables that's the only thing standing between me and death. Again though, it helps that I can't actually see them.
Airplanes are sort of odd, because they don't much scare me. I think the whole thing is so complex and foreign that I can't get a firm idea of what specifically could fail, so I don't have any specific thing on which to focus the fear. I dunno - I just know that they don't scare me.
Trains are a bit unsettling though, I guess because wheels and rails are something on which I can and thus do focus. It's va fairly distant rhing though, and thinking about it is the exception rather than the rule.
And so on...
This train of thoughts (lol) can keep you healthy, but the risks involved are rather slim. Better to be afraid of mayonnaise and French fries I guess.
With how elevators are engineered these days, it would be difficult to cause one to fall even deliberately. Multiple simultaneous system failures would be required that aren't fragile to begin with. Not sure about the particulars of your anxiety, but that one you might find some relief from through research.
You can also see tests of them, which gets performed on each and everyone before certification, where they are loaded to their max weight and are allowed to slam into the buffers at the bottom. It would be uncomfortable, but survivable.
Yeah - elevators don't cause anything close to the fear that amusement park rides do (and especially traveling ones), and I presume for that reason - because I know they have an array of safeguards. Notably old or sketchy ones can make me nervous, but I'm usually okay in new and obviously well-maintained ones.
But overall I still don't like them much. and generally just default to the stairs anyway. There's no chance that they're going to trigger anything like that, and it's good for me besides.
I take it you mock everyone for their phobias, then?
Modern cars are super safe though. You're basically strapped into a safety cage.
Fun fact: IRC if you're drunk it's safer to drive home than walk home. (Not so safe for other people, obviously).
I think "safer" is not the best word.
Per mile, walking drunk might possibly be more likely to result in death than driving drunk. Per mile. Per trip, I'd bet walking is safer.
But sleeping it off in your car is probably safer per instance than either.
So
Bloody Stupid Johnson then?
Dude there was a picture of that schlitterbaun or w/e water slide in KC under construction and I was like "There's no way this could end badly." Less than two years later sure enough it lops heads off.
*head
But yeah, fuck those idiots.
...rabies?
There's a family of possums in there. I call the big one Bitey.
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