Axel wrote:Edwardo wrote:What makes you think that the Feds are going to hire someone more qualified than the states do?... how would you suggest the Feds handle it differently than the state agency that let it open?
Like the previous story I referenced, because every state currently can do what they want, there are states like Kansas that do not require any on-site inspections at amusement park rides. In the aftermath of the tragedy-waiting-to-happen like Verrückt was, the Kansas governor said that he is open to changing state law.
So, what you're actually saying, is that this was a problem with the state of Kansas, and that IAAPA was correct in what they said. We don't expect the federal government to inspect every car ever year on the road in every state, so why should they inspect every ride? There are ASTM standards that parks and ride manufacturers follow. And no park out there sets out to build something that will kill someone. I don't think you get that. They're not going to be so lax that they start killing people regularly at parks, otherwise the parks will not be in business.
The local Unified Government stated that they had no discussion of the safety of Verrück prior to its opening (which Kansas law permits but doesn't require)... "“We are only verifying they built what they said they would build and landscape/site cleanup...nothing safety related.”
And from what I've seen, the investigation has yet to say the ride was faulty. So we still don't know if the ride, as built, was the problem or not. And if it was a problem, whats to say that a federal or state level inspector would have found the problem? They tested the ride quite a bit before opening.
Full time professionals at the Federal level would bring much more expertise to the initial engineering inspections of rides than some county fire departments that currently do the initial inspection in some states now, or no inspections at all as is done in Kansas.
That's all speculation and conjecture. What we can say is that Kansas had nothing in place to inspect rides, and a ride accident resulting in death happened in Kansas. There are plenty of other government organizations that are tasked with keeping us safe that have failures (cough*TSA*cough).
I'm not saying that Verruct wasn't a problem, I think it was. But one water slide that was built by a company shouldn't mean we have to reform the whole system. How often do you read of catastrophic ride failures in this country? Rarely. Because parks want to make money, and they know deaths at the parks tend to stop that from happening.
"Kansas regulations require amusement park rides to have a third party inspect them once a year and preserve records of inspections if the state decides to conduct an audit. Kansas hadn’t inspected Verrückt since it opened in 2014."
This sounds more and more to me like Kansas should be blamed in some part for what happened here, they weren't even following their own rules. But that doesn't mean other states aren't doing that.
