Nothing has been released yet, so this is pure speculation, but I'm expecting that in the end Gerstlauer (the manufacturer of the trains) is going to be found to have made the same mistake in the design of their restraints (combined with ride operating policies inside the park) that Intamin did causing the Superman: Ride of Steel death at Six Flags New England in 2004 and the non-fatal Superman: Ride of Steel incident at Darien Lake in 1999. The video below shows what almost certainly happened at Darien Lake (and the same basic issue at Six Flags New England as well):
[youtube]i0KmTMf0VVQ[/youtube]
The restraints are very similar to the New Texas Giant ones pictured above. While New Texas Giant does not have seat belts, it is worth nothing that both Superman coasters did have them. Again, pure speculation here (but education speculation), but I think in the end it will come down to one or two things, or a combination of the two.
1) Restraint design. For a ride with such extreme airtime, it is odd (though no one seems to have questioned it until now) that Gerstlauer designed trains with such similar restraints to the problematic Intamin ones. The ride did have sensors to make sure the bars were down a certain amount before dispatch, but maybe that still was not enough.
2) Operator error. Eyewitness accounts suggest the victim was not comfortable with the security of her restraint before the train left the station and was complaining to ride operators about it. This is a tricky situation for ride operators because this happens probably a hundred times or more every day (boy who cried wolf kind of situation), but it certainly looks like operator error could be involved. That said, these systems should be designed so idiot proof that even operator error would never allow something like this to happen.
It's going to be interesting to see what the investigation finds. It is definitely important that they find out exactly what went wrong and prevent it from happening again.
That said, it's important to put this tragedy into context given that New Texas Giant has given millions of safe rides since opening two years ago. The following is an estimate of fatalities per billion passenger hours of travel on roller coasters compared with common modes of transportation. This is probably the toughest metric you can apply to rides (since they are generally very short in duration), but even still they perform very well. Additionally, many roller coaster fatalities (but clearly not this one) are a result of intentional rider negligence and recklessness, which is generally not going to be the case with bus, rail, or air.
Motorcycle: 4840 deaths per billion hours
Bicycle: 550
Foot: 220
Car: 130
Van: 60
Water: 50
Air: 30.8
Rail: 30
Roller Coasters: 13Bus: 11.1
By the way, since I know it's going to be brought up, a comparison of this type of seat and restraint with B&M hyper coasters should make it clear why an incident like this could never happen on a B&M ride. The reclined angle of the seats and the clamshell design of the bar on the B&M rides, combined with the fact that B&M coasters do not have forces anywhere near that of a ride like New Texas Giant mean that they do not pose this risk.
