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String of amusement park injuries raises questions about safety


 This Nov. 2013 file photo shows Schlitterbahn's new Verruckt speed slide/water coaster in Kansas City, Kan. (Jill Toyoshiba/The Kansas City Star via AP, File)
This Nov. 2013 file photo shows Schlitterbahn's new Verruckt speed slide/water coaster in Kansas City, Kan. (Jill Toyoshiba/The Kansas City Star via AP, File)
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The incident that left a Pennsylvania boy in the hospital after he fell from a roller coaster Thursday was the latest in a string of accidents at theme parks this week.

There have been four separate incidents in a span of five days. In addition to the Pennsylvania incident, a 10-year-old boy was decapitated as he rode a waterslide at a Kansas water park Sunday, three girls fell from a Ferris wheel when the car flipped over on Tuesday and a park ride was closed in Ohio after a launch cable disconnected on Monday.

The unfortunate cluster of ride-related injuries has renewed questions regarding the safety of these rides, including that of what types of regulations are in place to make sure these rides are safe.

Faced with that question, experts explained that the regulations in place depend on where you are.

“It varies,” explained Dr. Gary Smith, Director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio and President of the Child Injury Prevention Alliance.

While the rides at carnivals and fairs which travel from city to city are overseen by the Consumer Product Safety Commission state and local governments have jurisdiction over “fixed site amusement” Smith said.

As a result, the regulations and inspections and enforcement vary from state to state. As Safety Analyst Ken Martin explained the fifty states have “fifty different ways to look at amusement rides.”

“No two states are the same,” Martin said.

“Some states are better than others,” Martin added, listing Pennsylvania and New Jersey as states that “do it better.”

“About half of states — including California, New York and Pennsylvania — require regular inspections from a government agency and allow the state government to investigate accidents,” according to the Daily Beast.

“But there are also about 10 states — including Oregon, Washington and Tennessee — that have no state oversight, leaving inspections up to county governments or private inspectors. Six states — Nevada, Utah, South Dakota, Mississippi, Alabama and Wyoming — have no regulation at all,” the Daily Beast’s Jason Silverstein wrote.

The myriad of different rules and regulations in place can make it difficult for people to gauge what safety protocols are being followed.

When you go to a ride you don’t necessarily know who is in charge of doing the inspections or what procedures are followed, Smith explained.

“Your best bet as a consumer would be to ask if you have concerns,” Smith said.

“All in all it is going to be a personal judgment because it’s very hard to know when you get on a ride what procedures are in place, for how long and who enforces them.”

The lack of consistency has led some to suggest that fixed-site rides be regulated like their travelling equivalents: federally.

Asked if federal regulation could help make these rides safer, Smith responded “the short answer is yes.”

“It isn’t the only route that could be taken,” Smith said describing it as a route that “may be necessary.”

“There’s been legislation introduced in Congress,” Smith noted.

As a congressman, Edward J. Markey (D-Massachusetts)introduced legislation aimed at restoring the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s jurisdiction over amusement park rides in every Congress since 1999.

The last one he introduced was National Amusement Park Ride Safety Act of 2011, according to GovTrack. It was not enacted.

Markey now serves as a senator and continues to believe fixed-site parks should be regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

“Amusement parks are not immune to accidents and they should not be allergic to federal oversight,” Markey said in a statement obtained by Sinclair.

“A baby stroller is subject to tougher federal regulation than a roller coaster carrying a child in excess of 100 miles per hour. We need to make fixed-site amusement parks subject to the regulatory authority of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which can provide safety expertise and regulatory enforcement over these rides.”

At present moment, there is no federal mandate that ride-related injuries are reported, something Smith says is “key to the problems we’re seeing.”

Smith was the senior author of a 2013 study that examined injuries to children related to amusement rides and described the difficulties they had conducting the study.

The data included a broad range of incidents, from those that took place in a bounce house to those that may have occurred at a large theme park, as a result they had to go through case by case to determine the location of certain injuries and evaluate them, Smith explained.

"That kind of work is telling," Smith said.

"There is no easy way right now to get a handle on what the magnitude of the problem is."

“There’s a lot of holes right now in the data that we do have that are made public,” Smith said.

“If there was a coordinated national system for injury data collection,” Smith suggested such a system “really would help guide our efforts to make these rides safer.”

“That is absolutely key to taking a step forward,” Smith said.

“Right now we have millions of people using these theme parks across the country,” Smith said, noting that this is especially true in the warm weather.

“Even though these injures are rare we can do better, we need to have good data first to guide our efforts.”

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