![]() ![]() In 2002, Representative Markey convened a blue ribbon panel through the Brain Injury Association of America and asked the members to analyze Speth's cases.But the panel never examined the Speth data, claiming it wasn't collected in a uniform fashion. Howard Speth, a New Jersey pathologist and amusement-park safety consultant, documented 68 cases of injuries that appeared to be caused by roller coasters. Those forces are less than the jolt of hopping off a step or plopping into a low-backed office chair.Even so, some doctors are skeptical. According to a 2002 study published in the Journal of Neurotrauma, the most powerful amusement-park rides subject riders to four to six g's. ![]() His family said he never should have been allowed aboard the ride.Nevertheless, the Mobarskys of the world account for only a portion of the body types at risk from roller coasters, safety advocates say.Īnd she said she had no way of knowing the ride could reopen healed wounds.The tunnel leading to the Dungeon Drop is modeled on a medieval torture chamber, but AstroWorld says real injuries aboard the ride are nearly impossible. He was 5 feet 2 inches, 230 pounds and confined to an electric scooter. He was pronounced dead a few minutes later.Compared with other riders aboard the coaster, Mobarsky had been a prime candidate for ejection. Eyewitnesses said his body spun like a Frisbee, hit the rail and fell to the ground. Mobarsky was clamped in with a T-bar-the same mode of restraint used aboard the Mayan Mindbender-then hoisted up with an eight-car train.Voted the best roller coaster in the world when it was built in 2000, the Ride of Steel plunged Mobarsky down an 80-mph descent, bumped him over several high-speed camel humps and in the last turn threw him out of the car. But 120 years after the ride opened on Coney Island, speeds aboard coasters have increased more than tenfold, and engineers still haven't figured out how to keep their machines reliably attached to patrons.The perennial restraint problem surfaced most recently at the Six Flags New England amusement park in Agawam, Massachusetts, where last month Stanley Mobarsky boarded the Superman Ride of Steel. The architects of America's first coaster ride were among the few ride designers to avoid the problem: Their Gravity Pleasure Switchback Railway topped out at 6 mph. ![]()
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