Australian Ride Safety Culture

[REGIE]

On 2/2/2023 at 10:01 AM, New display name said:

I rode it before Christmas when I was trying to ride Leviathan, and they said I could leave my phone in they tray or take my phone on the ride with me.  🤷‍♀️  I had to leave my glasses. behind.

Every time I ride I have to take my phone in my pocket on the ride. I even asked if I could leave my phone in the tray but the OP said no. Even thought the person a few spots in front got their phone put in the tray? I guess it depends what the op feels like doing at the time?

On 2/2/2023 at 10:44 AM, Dean Barnett said:

Well they should just let you take your phone in in zippered pockets then 

 

Just food for thought:

 

 

 

also skip foward to the 15 minute mark.

Hmm the video title has “worst park” in it. Maybe taking advice from the best worst park is not the best idea..

Edited February 3, 2023 by REGIE

[Dean Barnett]

20 hours ago, REGIE said:

Hmm the video title has “worst park” in it. Maybe taking advice from the best worst park is not the best idea..

The video title has Best worst park.. and it refers to how shit the front part of the park is compared to the back - and the standout of the park was their operations (including the use of turnstyles)

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

On 05/02/2023 at 5:47 AM, Dean Barnett said:

turnstyles

Is that some sort of change in fashion trends?

[REGIE]

@Dean Barnettdo you get royalties from turnstiles or something? A little 5% ?? are you the owner of turnstilez.com? 

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

3 minutes ago, REGIE said:

@Dean Barnettdo you get royalties from turnstiles or something? A little 5% ?? are you the owner of turnstilez.com? 

No royalties from Turnstiles - it's the turn of styles that's his thing...

[Stevie]

I've found one of the biggest differences between Australian operations and other countries operations is the seatbelts and harness. On some rides in Aus, if you pull down your harness or do up your own seatbelt, the ops have to unlock the seat/whole train so they can be the ones to close the harness and belt. I've personally never seen this at any other park I've been to. It seems to just slow down the whole process and even moreso when they have to unlock and recheck the whole train.

[Noxegon]

2 hours ago, Stevie said:

I've found one of the biggest differences between Australian operations and other countries operations is the seatbelts and harness. On some rides in Aus, if you pull down your harness or do up your own seatbelt, the ops have to unlock the seat/whole train so they can be the ones to close the harness and belt. I've personally never seen this at any other park I've been to. It seems to just slow down the whole process and even moreso when they have to unlock and recheck the whole train.

Genuinely wondering what the purpose of this is and what possible benefit can be derived by an operator connecting a seatbelt instead of a guest.

[jjuttp]

13 minutes ago, Noxegon said:

Genuinely wondering what the purpose of this is and what possible benefit can be derived by an operator connecting a seatbelt instead of a guest.

Cheaper insurance cost would be my bet.

[mba2012]

40 minutes ago, Noxegon said:

Genuinely wondering what the purpose of this is and what possible benefit can be derived by an operator connecting a seatbelt instead of a guest.

My understanding is that when the seatbelt is in the operator can't properly pull up and see if the harness is functioning correctly. 

[Stevie]

Unless the belt is at maximum length, there should still be enough slack to allow the op to pull up on the harness. I often find them pushing down on the harness before giving it a small tug and then pulling on the loop of the seatbelt to ensure it's locked into the harness and tightened.

[jhunt2]

3 hours ago, Noxegon said:

Genuinely wondering what the purpose of this is and what possible benefit can be derived by an operator connecting a seatbelt instead of a guest.

What I have been told as an operator/attendant is that it's a redundancy measure on some rides to make sure ride attendants are forced to physically check every restraint. A lazy staff member may be tempted to just skip over a lapbar if a guest seems to have done it correctly by themselves, but it's easy for a restraint to visually appear correct while actually being not properly secured. Making it procedure that attendants must do at least one element of the restraint forces them to come into physical contact with every restraint, and makes them more likely to do a proper check while they're there, and less likely to miss something small.

In my personal opinion, the same thing is accomplished by making it procedure to check every lapbar regardless of whether the rider did it correctly, but choose your poison really. It's all about making sure attendants aren't just conducting visual checks and are actually physically checking that restraints are secured correctly.

 

Just to add, a secondary reason is actually efficiency. Riders can often cause delays by doing restraints incorrectly. It's often more efficient for the attendants, who do the same restraints thousands of times a day and know how to do them quickly and correctly, to do them all, rather than having to release and redo restraints that were done improperly.

Edited February 6, 2023 by jhunt2
Just adding

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

10 hours ago, Noxegon said:

Genuinely wondering what the purpose of this is and what possible benefit can be derived by an operator connecting a seatbelt instead of a guest.

I can't speak for all attractions that have this requirement, but in the case of Steel Taipan, the control system anticipates that the RFID tag will be scanned within X seconds of the seatbelt being secured. The restraint system will timeout if not scanned within that timeframe, and needs to be resecured. 

(I was chatting with a ST operator one afternoon and they did up my seatbelt but didn't immediately scan the tag. They finished their sentence, tapped the tag, but were too slow and had to re-do it.)

This ensures that the operator is at least present when the restraint is secured, and the computer has a log of that, to show it occurred.

Given recent history, and the increasingly litigious society we live in, it is a painful, but necessary evil. 

[Dean Barnett]

1 hour ago, DaptoFunlandGuy said:

Given recent history, and the increasingly litigious society we live in, it is a painful, but necessary evil. 

As discussed before, its theatre. The ride doesn't even need seatbelts to be 100% safe 

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

2 hours ago, Dean Barnett said:

As discussed before, its theatre. The ride doesn't even need seatbelts to be 100% safe 

it isn't just theatre, its ass-covering, which probably also contributes to insurance savings. How else can you PROVE that an operator was present for the locking of the restraint?

[Dean Barnett]

I still don't get the insurance savings.  The ride is either safe to operate or not. If the rider is sitting correctly, and the restraint has been pulled up to check its locked (which actually isn't required because the train wouldn't dispatch if it wasn't).

Can someone please explain to me how an attendent looking at seatbelts been locked and then watching the actual restraint close makes it safer and therefore decreasing insurance premiums. 

 

[Naazon]

My car tells me if my Sons seatbelt isn't buckled. I still check though.

[REGIE]

It’s a “we did everything in our control” type thing I think

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

36 minutes ago, Dean Barnett said:

I still don't get the insurance savings.

Then there isn't much else we can do to help you understand. Even Regie gets it.

Try this:

Coroner: "How do we know that a person who was trained in the safe operation of this amusement device checked that the restraint was closed and locked before the ride was dispatched?"

Dreamworld: "Well your honour, here is a print-out of the ride's control system showing that RFID tag issued to *Operator* was scanned 3.6 seconds after the seatbelt was inserted into the buckle."

It's like home insurance. My insurer takes into account that I have an alarm system, and CCTV. Window locks and keyed deadbolts. crimsafe or diamond grill security screens. These are all things that make it harder for someone to break into my home, so I am less of a risk. 

The RFID tag makes it impossible to dispatch without an operator physically being present while every harness is checked. It can't prove they physically pulled on the restraint, but it proves they were there, and all things considered, it's likely that they checked while they were there, so the risk of an unrestrained launch and potential death decreases dramatically, and therefore, so do the insurance premiums.

[jhunt2]

1 hour ago, Dean Barnett said:

I still don't get the insurance savings.

It's about negligence charges as well. The RFID tags are a recordable, verifiable way of proving to a court that someone with approved training checked the restraint before any potential incident occurred. That's very important from that employee's point of view especially, because as long as they conducted safety checks correctly and in accordance with their training, they can be protected from criminal proceedings in case of any sort of accident. As an operator, I've been explicitly told this - if you do your job properly and in accordance with procedures, we can protect you if something does happen. The buck always stops with the operator when something happens on a ride, but if it can be proven they did everything in their power and within their training to prevent something from happening, then they can't be held personally liable.

From an insurance company's standpoint, that physical evidence is also an important aspect of settling claims for compensation on grounds of negligence or injury. Things like recorded CCTV evidence of operators performing their checks, or in the case of ST, the logs of the RFID tags, would be used in these cases to rule out the possibility that the checks were simply not done, which means the investigation can pretty swiftly be moved on from outright negligence to other factors like guest behaviour, mechanical or technical failure, or any other factor, such as operator training being adequate at a higher level, that could have caused a potential accident.

[Dean Barnett]

1 hour ago, jhunt2 said:

. Things like recorded CCTV evidence of operators performing their checks,

How is this different than the RFID system? You can just look back at the video and see what happened. 

 

2 hours ago, DaptoFunlandGuy said:

My insurer takes into account that I have an alarm system, and CCTV. Window locks and keyed deadbolts. crimsafe or diamond grill security screens. These are all things that make it harder for someone to break into my home, so I am less of a risk. 

I get all that.. but alarm systems / CCTV / locked windows and deadbolts do actually reduce risk - Seat belts and the RFID system do not reduce risk.

There's actual safety improvements with the RFID system - and you can tell this because nowhere else on the planet uses this system. 

The restraint is as safe as whether the rider pulls the restraint theirself, with no seatbelt. or if the attendant witnesses the seatbelt put on and restraint pulled down in 3.6 seconds.

 

2 hours ago, DaptoFunlandGuy said:

It can't prove they physically pulled on the restraint, but it proves they were there, and all things considered, it's likely that they checked while they were there, so the risk of an unrestrained launch and potential death decreases dramatically, and therefore, so do the insurance premiums.

The operator being present for the restraint being put down does not make it a safer system. 

3 hours ago, Naazon said:

My car tells me if my Sons seatbelt isn't buckled. I still check though.

A visual check then? Cool cool - the same as every ride dispatch around the planet. 

 

A good comparasion is RMC Gen 1/2 trains - which are notiourlsy a pain to dispatch because of the seatbelt and then the lapbar. 

Gusest do their own seatbelts up - ride ops check each row then lock the train and then check each restraint. 

Why can't ST operate like that?

[jhunt2]

Just now, Dean Barnett said:

How is this different than the RFID system? You can just look back at the video and see what happened. 

It's not. That's exactly what I'm saying. It's the same thing, just a newer technology. Arguably the RFID is a technological upgrade on CCTV because it provides solid data that can't be obscured by things like poor camera quality, bad angles or blind spots. It's just a clearer and less ambiguous form of confirmation from the operator. From the park's perspective, it's a safer and more reliable way to cover their backsides.

Quote

I get all that.. but alarm systems / CCTV / locked windows and deadbolts do actually reduce risk - Seat belts and the RFID system do not reduce risk.

You keep repeating this point, ignoring what everyone else is saying in response. It's not always about measures that reduce the actual risk, it's about taking redundancy measures to prepare for the eventuality of any sort of incident. Australia's negligence laws are very unforgiving to the amusement industry when it comes to incidents at the moment, so rigorous reporting and measures to ensure that they can verifiably prove that they did everything in their power to prevent an incident is a park's best protection.

It's also just about continually reducing risk to an acceptable minimum. Obviously, there's always risk in any activity, particularly amusement rides, but a great way of putting it that I've heard before is that parks and operators have to treat safety checks before every ride cycle like everything that can go wrong is going to go wrong on that cycle.

Seatbelts? RFID? Sure, they don't reduce risk really. But they force operators to come into physical contact with the restraint, making sure that they conduct a physical check on every restraint for every cycle, because it only takes one missed restraint for disaster to strike, and there's no coming back from that. You didn't check that one restraint? You're done, and so is the park.

You also keep saying that visual checks are adequate, but as an operator, I can tell you that you couldn't be more wrong. When we check restraints, we are not just checking if it's down and locked. We are checking for damage to the restraint or seat, checking for the appropriate amount of tension when we push and pull on it, checking that riders are seated in the correct position and abiding by safety regulations, and ultimately checking for anything out of the ordinary with the restraint system. That restraint is what keeps riders safe. It is literally the most important part of an operator's job to be completely sure that it is secured correctly before starting a ride.

We are trained to know how these rides should look, sound, feel and even smell when operating normally. We become very familiar with the rides, so when conducting those checks, we're not only visually inspecting the ride and restraints, but also listening for unusual sounds coming from the restraint when it moves, feeling that it is secure and doesn't have an unsafe amount of movement or "give", and generally conducting an up-close inspection of every rider to ensure that we can confirm they are safe to the best of our ability.

Quote

A visual check then? Cool cool - the same as every ride dispatch around the planet. 

I'm really hoping you mean a physical check, as in pulling and pushing on the restraint, because I have never been to a park anywhere in the world that my restraint wasn't physically checked by an operator before dispatch. And I've been to some sketchy parks. If I'm ever dispatched on a roller coaster with only a visual check of my restraint, that's the moment I'll start praying.

I get it, you're very efficiency-minded, and the RFID and operators doing seatbelts definitely slows things down, there's no denying that. I think what you're forgetting in DW's case is that they are very recently recovering from an incident that was just about as bad as it can possibly get in terms of negligence in the operation of their rides. If they're erring towards covering their own backsides, it's probably for the very valid reason that they cannot afford another incident where they're to blame at all, so they're taking every possible measure to ensure they can prove absolutely everything was in order if something ever happened on ST. If they're sacrificing a bit of efficiency in order to never repeat those mistakes, I'd say that's a pretty smart idea from their safety team.

[Dean Barnett]

I never said visual checks are adequite, I said they're a part of ever dispatch around the planet.  

 

RFID tags don't make the ride safer - the attendant could just go down the train swiping rfid tags and the train would be marked as secure.

All this aside the other practices discussed (not opening airgates til the train is empty etc) could be used to speed up operations - but as suggested before - its probably the parks on purpose slowing down operation to reduce wear and tear.. which is pretty unacceptable especially in peak periods. 

Velocicoaster has had around 20 million riders with no seatbelts, no RFID tags, and up until recently one attendant pulling up on restraints. Even with now 2 attendants checking restraints they still pump out 24 riders every minute. 

[joz]

1 hour ago, Dean Barnett said:

its probably the parks on purpose slowing down operation to reduce wear and tear.. which is pretty unacceptable especially in peak periods. 

Are you aware that you're calling them out for something completely bullshit that you made up?

[Noxegon]

3 hours ago, Dean Barnett said:

Velocicoaster has had around 20 million riders with no seatbelts, no RFID tags, and up until recently one attendant pulling up on restraints. Even with now 2 attendants checking restraints they still pump out 24 riders every minute. 

Olympia Looping has no seatbelts, and routinely manages almost 5000 guests per hour at busy events with a dispatch of a full train every 22 seconds. 

[webslave]

...until the RFID system is used as proof you didn't do what you were meant to

Bear in mind where the burden of proof lies.