Failure Explanations in Amusement Ride Accident Reports

Abstract

A failure framework was used to code a sample of 100 recent amusement rides reported in the media and public record. Conventional analysis captures little data about amusement ride accidents; media reports include more. The paper describes the coding of the media dataset on the failure framework, and summarizes the factors mentioned in the sample of accident reports. Accident reports were seen to concentrate on a small number of factors mainly focused on consequences and categories of event rather than on detailed consideration of precursors on the causal chain. Investigations do not explain how rider or operator error was produced or why it was not intercepted, nor do they consider human performance as a precursor of device failure. Future research will include interventions using the framework to increase awareness of human factors principles as accident precursors, and to aid investigators to capturing greater depth of information about the failure sequences.