Buzz Saw Harness Does Exactly What It's Supposed to Do

[New display name]

Gold Coast Bulletin love to talk stuff up.

In today’s headline. "BIG THRILL RIDE CLOSED INDEFINITELY"

But could you image it. 3 rides closed down for good in one area but still standing. Maybe that area needs to be renamed the graveyard

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

Forum Moderator edits thread title! Members up in arms over heavy handed moderation. Site says "we're just being honest".

[New display name]

In today's news "The Theme Park Social Network" copy other sites news stories and believe everything that they have read without using the thin between the ears.

(Without trying to derail this conversation. Has anyone noticed The Theme Park Social Network dude is at Movieworld/SeaWorld every day? I put this down to he does not have a job and can’t afford a pass to Dreamworld)

[webslave]

C'mon fellas, make some touch with reality. Sure, there is a secondary system in place in the event of failure of the first - but is it really not newsworthy when that primary restraint fails? On a twin-engine aircraft when an engine fails do we yawn and say "it's doing what it's meant to"? Of course not, because the cost of failure is very high - as it is here.

That a secondary system exists to prevent a major incident does not make the failure of the primary system any less newsworthy.

[joz]

I see your point, but I do think 'both systems fail' is waaaaay more than twice the news worthiness of 'one system fails'. Planes have single engine issues all the time and you never hear about them, because they're designed to fly safely with one and it doesn't really matter. Is it ideal? Obviously not. Is it dangerous? So long as the other doesn't fail no.

It's a little scary to hear the story for sure, but ultimately when the ride reopens I won't have any issues joining the queue and going for spin.

Edited February 18, 2015 by joz

[New display name]

C'mon fellas, make some touch with reality. Sure, there is a secondary system in place in the event of failure of the first - but is it really not newsworthy when that primary restraint fails? On a twin-engine aircraft when an engine fails do we yawn and say "it's doing what it's meant to"? Of course not, because the cost of failure is very high - as it is here.

That a secondary system exists to prevent a major incident does not make the failure of the primary system any less newsworthy.

How is it news worthy when while DW are doing their normal morning checks they found a problem?

Planes would be in the news 50 times a day if news was shown because a problem was found during standard checks before take-off.

From what I have read the problem was found during normal checks and not during a cycle with a person riding it.

DW own statement.

"They’ve got to keep it closed until they’ve done a full assessment.

“No one will ever be in danger because of those safety layers.”

"The spokeswoman said there was no incident with riders that sparked the closure."

Case closed

Edited February 18, 2015 by skeetafly

[webslave]

I dare say that if both systems failed people wouldn't be reading about it on Parkz first - it would be mainstream news.

When you lose an engine on a commercial flight there's an investigation as a matter of course. That investigation is almost always reported publicly.

Hark back to a time where we didn't have a requirement for secondary restraint systems; we'd have a real disaster here. The secondary system is not intended to substitute for the primary system, and instead is an avenue of last resort. Now, that's not to say this is a bad news story - if anything it's a validation that the safety systems of today are superior to the protocols of yesteryear.

I know there's a couple of lighting techs among us - they all know that they need to have fixtures with two points of contact (example a clamp and a safety wire). If one of your clamps failed during a show and you found the fixture hanging by its safety wire would that be a cause for significant concern? I know it would for me. After all, how often do you check that your safety wires are up to the task?

We should be thankful that the event was not more serious, and thankful that the lessons learned over the years assisted in avoiding such an outcome.

[New display name]

I dare say that if both systems failed people wouldn't be reading about it on Parkz first - it would be mainstream news.

Hark back to a time where we didn't have a requirement for secondary restraint systems; we'd have a real disaster here.

Why would we have a real disaster here when it was picked up during normal test without anyone in the seat.

[webslave]

You might expect the park to say that rider safety was never an issue, however could you ever envisage them saying otherwise? Certainly not the practice of any PR agency I've dealt with.

Part of the hub-bub around issues like these is the pressing need to determine the root-cause of failure. When you have a bunch of identical items and one fails you then have to assume that all are in imminent danger of failure until you can identify the root-cause. In this instance, whilst you say (cite?) that it was picked up during a normal test without anyone in the seat, is it really a likelihood that the issue just so happened to occur for the first time when the test was allegedly conducted? On the balance of probabilities the smart money is on 'no'.

[Zanstabar]

Seems like Dreamworld is having a bit of a restraint problem. TOT restraints weren't opening, Wipeout lap bars weren't going down and the Claw had a computer error. Those engineers better be paid extra...

[webslave]

All a bit busy inside a certain mountain you'll probably find...

[Brad2912]

Think you'll find that everytime one engine goes down on a 2 or 4 engine airplane, no one notices except the people in the cockpit, unless of course said engine has smoke billowing out of it.

It does no become newsworthy.

I'm sure there are plenty of times a morning safety check at any park has flagged an issue and it is resolved prior to opening, has delayed opening, or resulted in a closure. We would never hear about it, nor do we have to.

I suspect the only reason this has become news worthy was because someone posted it here with a stupidly sensationalistic headline, a couple of the bottom feeder Facebook pages read it here and posted it, and it snowballed.

[webslave]

Uh, yeah, so about that...

http://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/safety-investigation-reports.aspx?mode=Aviation&q=engine

https://www.google.com.au/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=engine+failure&safe=off&tbm=nws

(tl;dr - your claim that it's not newsworthy is thoroughly disproved)

A reversion in safety level to the avenue of last resort (and one in which the vehicle would not continue to run) is indeed newsworthy. Again, only because the cost of failure is so high. People get a bit 'funny' about the thought of falling out of amusement rides. Sentimental about their bodies, I suppose.

If a ride like Buzzsaw has a restraint failure such that a rider would be put at a heightened level of risk of serious injury or death would you want to know about that, regardless of whether you eventually chose to ride or not?

[New display name]

I agree with you Brad2912 how many times to you turn up to a park and find a sign that a ride has closed for the day it even says it on the webpages that it happen.

Maybe WEBSLAVE would like to see the news headline because it would be the true headline.

“Staff at Dreamworld did what they are trained to do and picked up an issue with a ride that no one was ever in danger of falling out because of the safety systems”

Sorry WEBSLAVE the Gold Coast news has a bad rep for putty out crap stories and I would not rely on a first time poster to get your information from.

Edited February 18, 2015 by skeetafly

[webslave]

You'll note that my objection was actually to this sycophantic attitude creeping in that made people think an issue like this needs to be played down. Fact is it's a safety issue, and regardless of whether it allegedly happened while in-service or pre-service it constitutes a risk to anyone who had ridden the ride in the days leading up to its discovery. Is it newsworthy that it happened? No? What if it happened again next week? Still no? What about the week after that? You can see where I'm going with that.

There's no need to try and play it down - nobody is reading this and being scared off. Restraints are important - issues that cause a failure in those are similarly important.

[raymond265]

It's not newsworthy. It's a maintenance issue and the workers did what they are meant to do.

Any fitter, mechanic or electrician would understand that stuff happens and there are systems in place for failures.

[webslave]

*yawn*, sure, it's not newsworthy. I've pointed to equivalency in other industries and the newsworthiness of such, I've pointed out similar instances making the news, and perhaps the most immediate sign of newsworthiness is that it was cause for a number of posts here. So, sure, characterise it as a maintenance issue (do you think the two are mutually-exclusive?), but the fact is it's information that would be of interest to a vast majority of riders, and ergo, is newsworthy for that reason.

QED.

[New display name]

I think you might need a lesson in how these systems work. You keep saying it’s a safety issue but if you understood how a lap bar worked you would know you if anyone rode it they would be perfectly safe I’m sorry but you don’t know what you are talking about.

[webslave]

I think you might need to consider that I have worked (or work?) in the industry and know quite well from first-hand experience how such a system operates, and the legal and maintenance requirements of such. Do you?

I understand it may be convenient to try and accuse somebody you're in a discussion with of ignorance in an attempt to bolster your own point of view, but the pesky thing about that is it's usually best backed with evidence.

[Slick]

You'll note that my objection was actually to this sycophantic attitude creeping in that made people think an issue like this needs to be played down. Fact is it's a safety issue, and regardless of whether it allegedly happened while in-service or pre-service it constitutes a risk to anyone who had ridden the ride in the days leading up to its discovery. Is it newsworthy that it happened? No? What if it happened again next week? Still no? What about the week after that? You can see where I'm going with that.

There's no need to try and play it down - nobody is reading this and being scared off. Restraints are important - issues that cause a failure in those are similarly important.

You are mightily misinformed, which is why those in the know, myself included, are downplaying this. I'd even go as far as to say it's naive and arrogant to think that any park in Australia would put anyone at any point in any actual real danger. The idea of fear is critical in an attraction being a hit with the public but the reality is (statistically speaking) you are in a practically incomprehensibly small amount of danger, to the point where making your breakfast and having a shower are literally more dangerous in Australia then going on the Buzzsaw, let alone any of our country's thrill rides.

Let me start by saying Australia has the most strictest guidelines for safety (particularly when it comes to the amusement industry) compared to virtually anywhere else in the world. I know this not only from "the internets", but from experience from working in the industry as an operator in this country AND from first hand experiences working with dozens of parks here and overseas through capturing media in theme parks. Operators in parks joke about the fact that their international counterparts will let you ride with sunnies but in Australia we won't even let people with velcro pockets to have a wallet stashed away. Rides in this country are not as grossly over-simplified as you put it in your "lighting and chain" analogy, ditto for the restraints and the ridiculously large amount of dual redundancies in place. People forget that these attractions do hundreds, if not thousands of cycles every week of almost every month of every year over many decades without a single injury.

To make a point really clear: the entire industry is based around pro-active maintenance and safety at any and all cost because the impact of someone falling out of a ride and sustaining a fatal injury is enough in this day and age to close a business permanantly and significantly impact others GLOBALLY. No park, no business, no share-holder and no person, from maintenance to operation to management want that situation ever, which is why there are multiple systems in place to discover and prevent such a thing before having to rely on a redundant safety feature at all, which is what has happened.

In the decades in which i've been i've been on this board, never have I felt more passionately, and by extension, never have I felt someone has gotten something so wrong than you have. That attitude is why it's made its way now to the Courier Mail, which has the potential to have profound impact on those casual ride-goers and create more of a frenzy of misinformation.

Furthermore, and I have no knowledge on this specific situation beyond what's been said officially by the park and what's been rumoured here, but there's a bloody huge difference between faults and failures found randomly or unpredictably because of a lack of care, maintenance or design (which this is most definitely not) versus having exceptionally great preventative systems in place that find a fixable fault well before it becomes a failure.

[webslave]

Liberal (and futile) use of the text formatting options aside, how did you come to the staggering conclusion that I am somehow misinformed? Perhaps you'd like to cite a specific example where I said something that you feel is misinformed? I'd be happy to set you straight.

Skipping over the spirited (yet misplaced) defence of the amusement industry in Australia, we get to the admission of exactly what I accused in the first instance - there is a concerted effort here by some to play-down a safety incident. Thankfully (and by design) the safety incident did not result in the injury of a patron and was allegedly identified by an existing maintenance process. Why play down an incident like that? It's complimentary to your touching homage to the safety standards our amusement operators conduct business within.

It would be a shame to allow your obvious emotional investment cloud your judgement in what is a newsworthy incident. We are certainly lucky that the protocols here worked for the most part as they are intended to do, but the question is always (and should always) be asked; how close were we to a major incident, were there any contributing factors, and what can be done better in the future. You don't find answers to these questions by sycophantically jumping to the defence of the industry for a perceived criticism, and the safety culture that you rightly speak so highly of was certainly not forged by a culture of playing-down incidents.

You know it makes sense, even if you can't admit that just yet.

[rappa]

I mean it is a safety concern as the primary system is not meant to fail, it's over designed so that the normal operating factors would never cause a failure. A failure is only the result of poor design or poor maintenance so that's a concern. Now having said that it's only a concern FOR THE PARK. As they need to concern what is to blame, design is not their fault where as maintenance is.

The public have no concern as there are redundancies for redundancies in all ride safety systems.

This article reads like the secondary REATRAINT system came into play (ie seatbelt) but I don't even think this is the case. Sounds more like the hydralic locking system failed and it fell to the ratchet to hold it. Which isn't even the secondary restraint, it's only the secondary locking system.

This sort if failure is more common than most would think and really not an item worthy of concern.

[webslave]

DJR, in many ways that's exactly what I've said here - the primary system is not meant to fail. That we have a secondary (and tertiary) system is fortunate as there was a time not too long ago where it was not mandatory.

It's the type of thing that people are interested in hearing about, and that's why I'm saying it's newsworthy. If nothing else other operators (and the manufacturer) will be interested to find out what happened. In an ideal world it's a simple in-house issue, but this world is far from ideal. There's little point trying to play it down as normal operations though - we are both in agreement that it's not something that should happen. Does it make it any less safe for riders? No, and that's not something I've even hinted at.

[Slick]

Liberal (and futile) use of the text formatting options aside, how did you come to the staggering conclusion that I am somehow misinformed? Perhaps you'd like to cite a specific example where I said something that you feel is misinformed? I'd be happy to set you straight.

Skipping over the spirited (yet misplaced) defence of the amusement industry in Australia, we get to the admission of exactly what I accused in the first instance - there is a concerted effort here by some to play-down a safety incident. Thankfully (and by design) the safety incident did not result in the injury of a patron and was allegedly identified by an existing maintenance process. Why play down an incident like that? It's complimentary to your touching homage to the safety standards our amusement operators conduct business within.

It would be a shame to allow your obvious emotional investment cloud your judgement in what is a newsworthy incident. We are certainly lucky that the protocols here worked for the most part as they are intended to do, but the question is always (and should always) be asked; how close were we to a major incident, were there any contributing factors, and what can be done better in the future. You don't find answers to these questions by sycophantically jumping to the defence of the industry for a perceived criticism, and the safety culture that you rightly speak so highly of was certainly not forged by a culture of playing-down incidents.

You know it makes sense, even if you can't admit that just yet.

You're totally on the money for the majority of that last paragraph. I'm sure they're all things Dreamworld are very interested in and i'm sure will be making sure of, no doubt. And you're right, when you don't have a culture of open communication when it comes to OH&S, things like Fukushima happen. This is why CASA are so open about faults and issues with aircraft, you can only be as good as the mistakes you learn from, absolutely.

What I take great issue with is hyperbole when so little is known which leads to an outlet like Courier Mail and causing a PR nightmare when realistically there shouldn't really be one. I really do think this isn't newsworthy, much in the same light when I hear a plane had to abort a landing because of something rudimentary like a cross-wind.

I mean it is a safety concern as the primary system is not meant to fail, it's over designed so that the normal operating factors would never cause a failure. A failure is only the result of poor design or poor maintenance so that's a concern. Now having said that it's only a concern FOR THE PARK. As they need to concern what is to blame, design is not their fault where as maintenance is.

The public have no concern as there are redundancies for redundancies in all ride safety systems.

This article reads like the secondary REATRAINT system came into play (ie seatbelt) but I don't even think this is the case. Sounds more like the hydralic locking system failed and it fell to the ratchet to hold it. Which isn't even the secondary restraint, it's only the secondary locking system.

This sort if failure is more common than most would think and really not an item worthy of concern.

This 100%.

[Noxegon]

I see your point, but I do think 'both systems fail' is waaaaay more than twice the news worthiness of 'one system fails'. Planes have single engine issues all the time and you never hear about them, because they're designed to fly safely with one and it doesn't really matter. Is it ideal? Obviously not. Is it dangerous? So long as the other doesn't fail no.

It's a little scary to hear the story for sure, but ultimately when the ride reopens I won't have any issues joining the queue and going for spin.

To be fair, you do hear about them if you read the right sites -- http://www.avherald.com/