The opening of Wild West World was among the best arguments for the need for Kansas lawmakers to look again at regulating amusement rides, a task assigned Friday to an interim legislative committee. The theme park’s abrupt closing does not change the fact that Kansas is among a handful of states that leave such rides’ safety to local code inspectors and insurance companies. Maybe that’s sufficient oversight. But the occasional reports of horrible accidents at least justify a renewed debate in the Legislature. State oversight doesn’t guarantee safety — in Kentucky, which regulates rides, a teen’s feet were severed last month when a cable snapped on a ride. But regulation “needs to happen,” Elmer Denning, a former assistant general manager of the Kansas State Fair, told the Kansas City Star. “Because one of these days someone’s going to get hurt and everyone is going to get uptight.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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10 Comments
Local code inspectors and insurance companies, would you trust them at being design, mechanical and electrical engineers?Who is qualified to perform the task of saying what is safe?Comparing rides to the automobiles, there is way more to rides then there are to automotives when it comes to physics.Now days these rides are getting faster, upwards to 70 mph speeds and some even faster, going in all different directions.What is the latest in thrill rides? Try a trip up into outer space if you can afford it.You are not going prevent every mishap but as technology increases so do the risk and I would rather trust the manufacturing engineers with clear standards for safety.
I don’t know if we really need ride inspectors. Perhaps but I would like to see more facts such as the number of injuries per rider. I just don’t hear that often about rides injuring and killing folks despite the fact that millions of people ride them every year. And the tort system is pretty good at keeping such rides safe. Neither the operator or the manufacturer want to face a jury fawning over a dead or disfigured child.
This scares me. I guess I know never to go on a carnival ride in Kansas.
What’s Missouri’s policy? They’ve got many amusement parks with good safety ratings.
Sure, just what we need. More rules, more laws, more inspectors, more regulations. The Kansas Legislators will tie themselves up in knots trying to fix another “not broken” matter. Here’s the deal. If the ride looks real scary, and if it looks like it could kill you…don’t get on. Ok?
If you are hurt on a ride, you can sue in civil court. Don’t the police already investigate accidents to determine if there was criminal intent?
Thrill seeking is dangerous. It doesn’t matter if you are driving 100+ on K-96 or riding the roller coaster. You make a choice to do either. Maybe Rhonda still needs a nanny, but leave us adults alone.
What’s the point? There are accidents that are cause by human error. How will the inspection deal with those?
Does it mean that if a ride is inspected and stamped with the inspector’s approval that the inspector should also be sued if an accident occurs?
Does it mean that no accidents will ever occur again if the rides are inspected?
How many accidents occur in Kansas a year?
We don’t need more laws!
Such rules and regulations will only insure that Kansas doesn’t have any amusement rides
I can not speak for Kansas State, but I lived in Washington State for ten years and off and on I would work for a family friend that owned a small family carnival.
This man was the most safety minded guy I ever knew and when we setup the rides and broke them down, he checked everything that made up that ride and would replace a “Cotter Pin” or what we called a “Mouse Key” (Those pins that look like an “R.”) if it even LOOKED like it was going to break during a ride’s operation and trained his supervisors to do the same thing.
Washington State even has a department that has the soul job of inspecting carnival type rides and to shut that ride down (That was if Lee had not shut it down first.) if even one bolt had one thread striped on the tip of it. And they were bloody well good at it. I swear that those people could smell a damaged part on a ride a mile away.
But no amount of inspecting of a ride is any ruddy good if you do not have someone that cares about their rides and they only want as much money as they can get before the ride gives up and hurts someone!
From what I learned working at this carnival, if you start with State funded rides inspections and very good inspectors that have the power to shut the whole operation down for even looking at her/him wrong. Then you will be getting good and working rides that should be operating.
If a State will not inspect rides or have good rides inspectors at all, more and more rides WILL BREAK DOWN and more people will be getting hurt (Or dying!) when all they were looking for was a pleasant time to spend with friends and family.
Lady Donna
Thank You !
I’d be interested in an updated GoogleAnalytics chart (may be two with about six weeks coverage), just to see if the effect did wear off after a while and also, did others link to your new name with the same link-text (allinurl:…). I hope you will publish a follow up.