RollerBee wrote:Ty-Rant_13 wrote:Homey G. wrote:I'll say it. I hate that B&M had to come up with a more efficient way to have seatbelts. If this country weren't full of preposterous hair-trigger litigious morons, we wouldn't have to idiot proof and engineer around them.
I don't think it was people's stupidity or anything like that that caused B&M to install seat belts on all their coasters, but rather a certain incident involving a certain hybrid coaster that had only a lap bar at a certain Six Flags park in Texas. (And if you still didn't get it, it's the New Texas Giant incident. 
) If Six Flags could prioritize safety a little higher, we might be able to still have all these fun things! I'm sure I could get some flak for this, but Six Flags really drags down the industry in this way...
Umm that accident as I understand could happen anywhere. The lapbar was in the proper position, a seatbelt would not have prevented it. A rider can undo a seatbelt, 95% of lapbars can't be undone by riders.
Some people claim that they heard the woman say it did not feel tight enough and they sent the train anyway. If this is the case, then the employee who (supposedly) heard her would be to blame, or perhaps the manufacturer if the lap bar was faulty (which Six Flags claims and the manufacturer denied), or Six Flags fault if they failed to ensure the installation of (or hire a company that would install) a secured dispatch system (where the train cannot be sent if there are any open seats, which B&M uses). An accident like this gets the idea in people's heads that rides with only a lap bar are unsafe. Even though you can undo your own seatbelt, if someone did that and they died then that would be seen as their fault and not (entirely) the park's nor he ride's. Regardless, it could not happen anywhere because the park could ensure that the ride system has a series of safeguards (multiple ratchets required for dispatch, secured dispatch system, etc.) AND the most competent employees who are trained to always check extremely carefully, even at the risk of losing capacity, especially if someone does not feel safe. Let's not forget that this is the same company (albeit not the same park) that had a guest ejected from Darien Lake's Ride of Steel because his lap bar wasn't closed properly; The problem is not isolated to just one incident.
So you proved my point: The mindset of "It could happen anywhere" is the exact reason intense coasters are now having seatbelts installed. Whether or not having a seatbelt would have saved that woman's life, or anyone who's restraint opens during an intense ride is more or less irrelevant: People want to feel safer regardless of whether or not they actually are, so B&M is installing seatbelts to have more people ride their coasters. I personally know at least one person who would not go on a B&M hyper because it only had a lap bar, but once it got seatbelts, they were (still scared, but) fine with trying it. This is in spite of me telling them repeatedly that the train literally cannot be sent if any of the restraints are even close to being open (at least two or three ratchets down).
A seatbelt alone, in my mind, is not going to be able to hold a 200 pound person in their seat going around an over-banked turn at even sixty km/h, and if the lap bar were to fail, I don't see the news story sounding any better as "the rider was flung from the ride despite still having their seatbelt on." It's all about people feeling safer, not being safer, and Six Flags, as a general rule (in my opinion) does not contribute to this feeling.
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