INTRODUCTION
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A roller coaster is always a fun thing to ride weather your at a carnival or a huge amusement park. Some roller coasters you stand up for, others you sit down, and some you pretend to fly. What if I told you not all roller coasters are safe. What would you do? Stop riding them, maybe continue to go on them but at the risk of knowing you could die at any minute? In reality, the chance of you dying from a roller coaster is [1]1 and 750 million, in easy to understand terms, it’s pretty low. But still, this is just theoretical and a disaster can be caused by 1 of 3 things. The first being human error. The second, forces of nature (weathering/erosion/other). The last is mechanical issues. Below you will find all the possible reasons the 3 things listed above might happen.
CAUSES OF DISASTER:
HUMAN ERROR PREVENTED
Most roller coaster incidents are caused by human mistrial. What do I mean by this? Well the answer to that would be that most humans don’t fully look everything over. Lets look back at the Alton Towers incident that occurred on “The Smiler”. Image of the crash posted on page. [2]This crash took place the summer of June 2, 2015. Everything was fine until 1 P.M. when a warning light went off on the master control board. The light indicated that there was a fault in the ride. Riders were removed from the ride after it completed its final cycle. When the guests were gone coaster engineers were called to repair the fault, while they walked to the ride a 5th cart was added to the track. However, just before the repair crew arrived the rides operator decided to send the empty car 5th around the track to test and make sure everything was working as intended. This was not the case though. The empty car had failed to make it up the incline (chain lift) and was rested inside of the valley in between the station and the lift , this factor activated The Smiler's warning system. So when the engineers arrived to repair the lift hills fault they were not informed of the 5th car, they successfully got the car back on “track” (up the hill). The car was relaunched and was going good until the first loop, it failed to make it up, causing the car to stall in a valley. While the operators were unaware that the test car failed to make the track, they started to let guests back onto the ride. One engineer took note of the 4 visible cars, they did not see the 5th car that was still resting in the valley. At 1:51 P.M. the car full of guests made it over the lift hill, unready for disaster. The cart was now approaching the first loop. Then, at 1:51 p.m. a sound, which sounded like a 90 M.P.H. car crash noise sounded. It took 11 minutes for 999 to be called. (Time 999 was called: 2:08 p.m.) After 999 arrived it took 4-5 hours to get all guests that had been evolved in the crash to escape, most suffered from severe blood loss, and broken bones which ultimately resulted in amputation of multiple limbs.
If you guessed the human error right then way to go, but if your baffled by what the error was then i’ll gladly tell you! See communication is key to getting everything right and to avoid disaster, what the employees working at The Smiler failed to do is communicate! What should have happened is the Alton employees should of told the maintenance crew that they had put a 5th car on the track, if they simply said this then you wouldn’t have had to close for a week Alton Towers. Then again when the reporters found out the engineer felt pressure to get to the ride back working quickly and that the error could be down to “mistaken priorities”. Since then the company has gotten better with this kind of stuff seeing as no major injuries have been reported.
Now that I have explained human errors verbal wise lets talk about more errors that humans can make when building/repairing roller coasters, such as, design, misplacement, and state of mind.
Design, everything has it. Weather its a building or an art project, it has design. When it comes to roller coasters are always different in design, that is unless you are a Wild Mouse coaster. Now, human design flaws are pretty common. Some flawed coasters are ride able when first built but usually the level of complaining or amount of injuries forces developers to change there design. So lets pretend I was a roller coaster engineer and I had just been hired to build a wooden roller coaster in California, they have frequent earth quakes so i’ll have to build a roller coaster that can adapt. Something I have to work with is a small amount a space. My plan is to build up. The coaster will be a wooden coaster. Now that I have a plan I can start designing. Due to earth quakes instead of a less compact bracing area I have to build it stronger and thicker. The height of my roller coaster will not exceed 100 feet because I am building next to a city. The ride will go like this: Lift hill, turn 90 degrees, down hill drop, sudden sharp turn, hill (up), spiral back to station. This roller coaster has a design failure. The failure is the sharp turn that comes after the drop. Why, well as we all should know, a down hill drop then turn is extremely bad for my small 2 person coaster cars. The turn will cause passengers to get 2 things, air time and a injure from hitting the carts side inner walls.
The second human error I listed was misplacement. Misplacement on a roller coaster is often found in wiring and assembly. I say these because there the most common, if your starting to wonder why I'm only discussing things that are the “most common” well its because I don’t want to go and talk about things that may or may not be true. Lets get back on “track”. I want to start with wiring first because assembly will probably be longer than this. So, miss placement of wires usually results in assembly rewrites. The effect of incorrect wiring can result in electrocution/death, incorrect function of ride, and major-minor defections. Electrocution can affect you, the rider, even if you are in the car. If any peace of the steel lap bar is touching electrically charged pieces of metal that are touching the place where the wiring was falsely done then you do indeed have a chance of dying. Incorrect function of rides may just cause the ride to speed up or slow down, results very with this one. Lastly defections, they can cause certain track elements to misfire or not work, like Incorrect function results very. To prevent this kind of stuff I suggest workers check wires and electrical components more than once, it will also lead to the best results.
Last but certainly not least, we have state of mind. This one I really got some good notes for, so adjust your reading glasses and make sure your lap bar is allllllllllll the way down! Lets begin with the simple but true saying “Everyone’s state of mind is different”. I have no idea who says this but its true. You the reader may have a sports mind, or a creative mind. Like I said they very. What I am trying to apply is that if you are working on a roller coaster and you had a “I am currently high on something” mind then your work will be harder. In my and most peoples opinions we say that certain people are cut out for certain jobs. While this is half true and half wrong. What I have discovered is that people have personality swings. Don’t confuse this with mood swings, while mood swings are swings between happy, mad, and sad, personality swings are basically a sudden swing in the things you like. For example say you have a hardcore gamer that spends all day in a dark room alone. The gamer plays a new game that reminds him of just how much nature has to offer. Mood swing, now the hardcore gamer is outside having fun with locals. So lets apply this to roller coaster engineers. Pretend once more with me, say there is a worker, his name is Steve, he used to like sports but now he does roller coaster engineering. One day Steve was eating lunch and talking with his fellow workers. One of them brings up the basket ball game last night. Now, when Steve goes back to working he is distracted and thinking of all the great things he can do at the local basketball court with friends. Steve isn’t paying much attention and he slips on a cat walk and plummets 50 feet to his death. Basically what I'm saying is people are all cut out for different things. They say nature is the cause of all great things, partially true. See, if your building a building something to watch out for is rapidly growing plants, water, underground cavities, and frequent storm locations. To get a better understanding of what I will be talking about in this section, know there will be 3 main topics Weathering, Erosion, and Storms/Natural Disasters. To give a brief sum of what the content of this section contains I will give you a hint, New Orleans. If you know what this means congrats. The event is tragic and a reminder to all theme parks that you must be ready for anything that nature has to offer.
FORCES OF NATURE
Weathering and Erosion are somewhat similar concepts but they are 2 different words nonetheless.