I have many fond childhood memories of Schlitterbahn so this hits close to home.
Without going full gruesome, the details are rather impressive in how much impunity the developers thought they had. (Move fast and break things, | things = people.)
This is the Kansas one, of course, but I'm awfully fond of the same one you are.
I will keep that indictment and send a copy to everyone who talks mockingly about "elf an safety innit" YES! HEALTH AND SAFETY! THEY'RE GOOD THINGS! HERE IS THE ALTERNATIVE!
Did people learn nothing from Action Park.
Just looking at the picture of the slide, I can't imagine how this wasn't *really obviously* a death trap. If you need the net over that hump to keep things from flying off, then the the flying things (people) are going to hit steel rings holding the net more often than not, right? I concussed myself and broke a tooth hitting a steel handrail after missing a step and I wasn't moving anywhere close to 70 miles an hour.
And now one of these guys has been arrested by US Marshals in Brownsville. Sure sounds like he was trying to flee the country, no? Unless there's a new Schlitterbahn location there I didn't know about.
There's a schlitty in Port A, but I'm going with your bet.
Unclear whether we're talking about Port A1 or Port A2.
Link: http://www.kansascity.com/news/article206886324.html
In his defense, I imagine if you've already driven from Kansas to Port Aransas it's super-easy to blink and find you've inadvertently traveled another 200 miles.
It makes more sense than having employees lie about injuries on your ride while waiting around for somebody to die have the whole thing fall apart.
Jeez, I read some of the tweets of parts of the indictment and how fucking stupid are these people. I mean, I thought of a better system just browsing the story- some kind of rails for the boat so you put the force on the vehicle instead of, say, your customers' heads.
At least the one guy decided to change the razor-wire cage into netting held up by hard metal hoops.
Are these things not certified and regularly inspected by whatever state agency regulates the kinetic amusement industry?
Or not, because Kansas?
The law got changed after the accident to require stricter standards. The kid who was killed was the son of Scott Schwab, a Kansas state Representative who is now running for Secretary of State.
Check out https://www.injuryrelief.com/blog/how-is-representative-scott-schwab-not-a-hypocrite/
Scott Schwab voted for a Kansas law capping damages in personal injury cases at $300,000. Then when his son was killed he used a loophole allowing him to sue according to Texas law to win an award of $20m.
I don't blame Schwab for using the law to get the maximum award he possibly could, but I do blame him for legislating as if his citizens shouldn't be able to.
That bit about the lawyer repeatedly lying to both the detective and the mother of the whistleblower to get the police report was amazing and though IANAL sounds to me like it should be cause for some kind of disciplinary action.
This accident brings to mind a comment I made in the Action Park thread about researching amusement park deaths years earlier for a Usenet discussion.
I remembered that amusement park safety report in part due to one fatal accident description that has semi-haunted me through the ensuing years: An operator shunted a roller coaster car to a "low clearance" area under the mistaken impression it was empty. And so I pay it forward.Now that's also some A+ safety design.
The best bit of this story is the name of the ride: Verrückt. "Completely insane". Yes, yes, very much so. Ganz und gar verrückt.
On the other hand, who calls their water park "Schlitterbahn"? Good grief.
The name, like the safety standards, is from an earlier America.
With a name like Schlitterbahn, it has to be safe.
And the original part of schlitty is some of the most charming kitsch on the planet. IMO.
It makes me think of "Schlitz", which I think of as the only beer named by onomatopoeia for the sound of being drunk.
19: Premise for a horror movie: amusement park run by aggressively incompetent teens.
I would bet any money that the movie already exists. Not necessarily explicitly a documentary of Action Park, either.
There was an amusement park movie filmed across the river in Kennywood, but I don't know what it was called or what it was about.
It makes me think of "Schlitz", which I think of as the only beer named by onomatopoeia for the sound of being drunk.