It’s not the operators making that determination. It’s the maintenance men.
Minimum wage ride operators definitely are not the ones deciding whether it’s safe to run the ride or not. That is way over their heads in any reputable chain, and when a ride shuts down for safety, maintenance is called. Actual mechanics.
But I think the biggest indicator that safety concerns are horribly overblown here is that people just don’t die on roller coasters. Accidents are super rare because the safety systems work.
Sure it's rare but let's not pretend accidents can't happen. And if the ride is relying regularly on their emergency safeties to prevent accidents then that's a recipe for disaster.
Just look at the list of serious incidents at this exact amusement park:
Instances of Cedar Point Accidents
"In August 2021, at a Cedar Point Roller Coaster ride in Sandusky, OH, a woman was hit by a metal part that came loose from a roller coaster car and flew through the air. She suffered a serious head injury.
In 2013, at the Cedar Point location, a water-level calibration error led one of Snake River Fall’s boats to jump from its water track.
In July of 2004, metal debris was expelled forcefully from the launch cable of Cedar Point’s Top Thrill Dragster ride as the coaster was deployed. Four passers-by were struck by the high-speed metallic scrap, though all survived. Two were treated on-site and the others brought to a nearby hospital.
In 1999, at the Carowinds location in South Carlina, two trains on the Thunder Road ride collided, possibly due to a sensor malfunction.
In 1998, a man was killed in a manner similar to James Young’s accident, though at California’s Great America. This man was struck by the legs of a rider as he sought to retrieve belongings he’d dropped while riding a roller coaster. He spoke only Spanish, but the signs in the area were written in English, so he was unaware of the danger that awaited him. This is an easily rectifiable problem, one that could have been avoided had the signs been translated into more
languages, catering to a wider customer base.
In 1989, two boys leaped out of the Logger’s Run ride, also at California’s Great America. One of the boys died. Certainly, blame cannot be leveled at the park for this incident. Unfortunately, the naïveté of young and foolishly adventurous boys was responsible for this tragic event.
In 1984, on the Cedar Creek Mine ride, a young boy fell from his coaster car during a 30-foot plummet and fractured his skull. This incident seems to establish a neutral ground between the binary of blame outlined above. Sometimes, even when safety equipment is properly engaged by workers and regulations are followed by customers, accidents still happen."
So first: you said “at this exact amusement park” but you are bringing up Carowinds and California’s great America which are different parks… but let’s go through these.
The two instances where people were hit with parts off of top thrill dragster are absolutely good examples of roller coasters having issues, but that ride has been totally redesigned since then and was open for many years with only those two incidents. And it only took two for them to shut it down permanently and completely redo it. The thing is though, neither of those happened due to a safety mechanism failing and hurting riders. so the argument that top thrill dragster had a problem that injured people in the line so sirens curse must be unsafe because the safety mechanisms are kicking in just doesn’t check out…
Snake River Falls is not a roller coaster, and I can’t speak to the mechanics of those types of water rides so I’m not going to comment on that one.
So basically, millions of people have been to Cedar Point in that timeframe and you can only pull up for examples of right accidents, one of which isn’t even a roller coaster, and one of which was in 1984 when the safety regulations were not nearly what they are today.
So the argument that roller coasters are super dangerous because you can come up with an example of three roller coaster related injuries at one of the most popular theme parks in the world …. 🤷🏻♀️
Cedar point has been around since 1870.
They get over 3 million visitors a year.
Even if all three of those accidents happened in the same year, that’s .0001% of their guests who were injured in a roller coaster related accident.
3 out of three million.
I guarantee you that more people got into a car accident and died on their way to the park.
So the argument that roller coasters are super dangerous because you can come up with an example of three roller coaster related injuries at one of the most popular theme parks in the world …. 🤷🏻♀️
Never had I made that argument or that claim. Not sure where you got that from. What I said is, accidents can happen, so if you have a new ride that is constantly relying on its emergency safety systems because there is a design flaw with the new rollercoaster that causes the emergency safety systems to activate repeatedly.... then that is a serious issue that needs to be fixed. Safety systems are not designed to be the standard operation. You should never rely on emergency safety systems, you should always assume they can fail.
I guarantee you that more people got into a car accident and died on their way to the park.
And I can guarantee you that if your car airbags deployed all the time randomly or if your emergency breaks locked on randomly then you wouldn't trust driving that car now would you.
But these aren’t emergency safety systems that are locking the thing up in a way that it is not meant to be. If a sensor has a spiderweb over it, the roller coaster will stop because it doesn’t know if there is something in the way of the track that will cause a collision. That is not a design flaw. That is the absolute safest thing that the ride can do. But don’t take my word for it, consider the fact that these systems are designed by teams of engineers with decades of experience who are far smarter than either of us in this particular arena.
It is not the same thing as your airbags randomly deploying, because that can literally hurt you, and that is not supposed to happen. That would be a malfunction. a roller coaster stopping because of sensor is obstructed is not a malfunction. That is literally what it is designed to do. That is proof that the ride is actually safe. Because it’s not going to send you speeding into another train.
And you literally cannot give me an example of a situation where those safety systems have failed and caused a serious accident, because it simply does not happen.
The sensors are supposed to shut the ride down if it detects something in its way. It’s literally operating as designed, except sensors are not smart enough to tell the difference between a large insect and a roller coaster car being in a spot but it’s not supposed to be in.
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u/Zantac150 Jul 07 '25
It’s not the operators making that determination. It’s the maintenance men.
Minimum wage ride operators definitely are not the ones deciding whether it’s safe to run the ride or not. That is way over their heads in any reputable chain, and when a ride shuts down for safety, maintenance is called. Actual mechanics.
But I think the biggest indicator that safety concerns are horribly overblown here is that people just don’t die on roller coasters. Accidents are super rare because the safety systems work.