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Drayton Manor Park - Splash Canyon Incident

Areas like watching monitor system for misbehaviour on a ride could be a very useful area for machine learning/ AI systems going forward- I would think it's likely to be more effective at flagging up potential issues than a very board ride opp
 
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Doublethink said:
Areas like watching monitor system for misbehaviour on a ride could be a very useful area for machine learning/ AI systems going forward- I would think it's likely to be more effective at falgging up potential issues than a very board ride opp
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Yeah, I think you're probably right. That said, eventually (unfortunately) I think we'll get to a point where new rides in particular (and therefore eventually all) will mean that there isn't an opportunity for this sort of stuff to happen.

Falgging sound rude.
 
Rick said:
Yeah, I think you're probably right. That said, eventually (unfortunately) I think we'll get to a point where new rides in particular (and therefore eventually all) will mean that there isn't an opportunity for this sort of stuff to happen.

Falgging sound rude.
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Oops meant flagging silly phone! I think that's the exact reason that non lap bar water rides appear to be dying off, people are too unpredictable if not physically restrained!


Saying that SeaWorld, Silver Dollar City and several other parks in the states are getting huge new rapids rides which are much more intense than rides like Congo were even in their prime soaking ages. Infinity falls was an intense ride!
 
The following just taken from the latest updates

'The most significant of the failings is the operator’s ability to detect misbehaviour on CCTV'
Mr Boham continued with his report and criticised the fact the ride operator is not able to properly monitor people while they are on the ride.

He said: “Overall the means to detect and address misbehaviour fell significantly short of providing a reliable, consistent system.

“The most significant of the failings is the operator’s ability to detect misbehaviour on CCTV.”

He said the ride operator was limited in monitoring the ride by the fact the cameras only cover half the course, the fact the camera image is small on the screens and the limited view of each camera.

He said the corporate management at Drayton Manor Park also failed to take into account that people struggled to monitor screens for long periods of time.

He added that when the park was not busy and the ride only had a single attendant, it would be even harder for the ride operator to watch the CCTV.

16:06
 
Benjsh said:
Has there ever been one that flipped upside down?

I know the one in Australlia did but wasn't that one out of the water at the time and on the lift hill?
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Thorpe's Rapids had two capsizes within its first few months of operation, the one everybody knows about that resulted in the kid loosing an ear, and a first one that was an empty raft a few weeks before. It's the reason for the makeshift tank stoppers that they added in the water by the viewing area.
 
IanSR said:
Thorpe's Rapids had two capsizes within its first few months of operation, the one everybody knows about that resulted in the kid loosing an ear, and a first one that was an empty raft a few weeks before. It's the reason for the makeshift tank stoppers that they added in the water by the viewing area.
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I thought he fell out and lost his ear? Didn’t know it capsized


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pj said:
I thought he fell out and lost his ear? Didn’t know it capsized


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Two boats got stuck in the tunnel. Another boat hit them causing one to capsize which resulted in the boy being scraped along the side of the channel, resulting in him losing his ear (which was later found but was by then too late to be reattached).
 
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dickie001x said:
Two boats got stuck in the tunnel. Another boat hit them causing one to capsize which resulted in the boy being scraped along the side of the channel, resulting in him losing his ear (which was later found but was by then too late to be reattached).
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Interesting. I wonder if that happened this year would it have reopened? What changes did they make?


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They added the spacer mechanism at the foot of the conveyer to help keep boats evenly spaced. Before that, boats tended to clump together which resulted in congestion in the tunnel (which was when the two boats got wedged in there).
 
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dickie001x said:
They added the spacer mechanism at the foot of the conveyer to help keep boats evenly spaced. Before that, boats tended to clump together which resulted in congestion in the tunnel (which was when the two boats got wedged in there).
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Oh really? So before that there was no form of blocking or spacing on the ride at all? That seems crazy!


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Islander said:
Oh really? So before that there was no form of blocking or spacing on the ride at all? That seems crazy!
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It was a different time, it was still very much trial and error. Ron Toomer coming up with new inversions with wire coat hangers whilst his wife was doing the laundry pretty much personifies how things were back then.
 
Overall I'd say it's a mixed bag of information. I'm surprised at how objective some of them have been at identifying issues and it just feels so disappointing that she was standing up for the entire course and it wasn't noticed or observed, let alone acted on. I think a lot of us assumed that Drayton had been on the ball with everything and that she gave no indication or reasonable response time for an op to act on.
Having said that, some of those criticisms are very poorly researched and honestly sound amateur.

-Stuff like the 'sound of the roller coaster' meaning you couldn't hear through the Op Speaker system is just flat out stupid. Shockwave passes intermittently, only goes very close to the course at one section which isn't at any 'hot spot', and the sound is very brief anyway, so brief that you could make the same point about someone screaming.
-Again the emergency stop point is poorly researched. The ride can only drain at a certain rate back in to the reservoirs around the center of the ride area and the worst place to be trapped in if all pumps were off during a drainage is the deepest area by the lift hill. All this fake news crap about "It took 10 MINUTES for ride op to press emergency stop" is just feeding in to a false narrative without clarity
-The points about the signs needing to clarify that you could die if you fall out. Mate. It literally says "hold on AT ALL TIMES" Surely that points out the urgency that you need to hold the center rail and remain seated without exception. Why do you need to specify what could happen? Just look at the flow of the water, does it take a quantum calculation to work out that it's not a good idea to fall in to it?
-A long while back on this forum, I know a number of us pointed out that the manufacturers guidelines and COSWP was an important factor. The fact that issues that are clearly down to the designer given Drayton was following said guidelines is so important yet still the H&S executive seems to fail to notice this.

That being said, it's clear the CCTV issue stands out and for a good reason. The old senior ride op notes that the ride was operated much more rigorously circa 1993 and staff cuts are not a good idea when really staff need to be focusing on as many screens as possible. A lot of people misbehaved on Splash and it's clear that more measures should of been taken for this given what we now know. The point about the need for CCTV and quality of images surely is a blurred line, and you'd assume that an independent review would of brought up the fact that standards had changed since the early 90s. Was there any law or guideline that required a change. The same goes to the two major effects that were used on the ride up until 2005-2008; the blasting pipe and the canister that leaked on you. The blasting pipe in particular, which I explained a while back, controlled by the ride operator was an excellent finale effect on Splash Canyon and used to drop a tonne of water over you (reference to post https://towersstreet.com/talk/threads/drayton-manor-park.196/page-98#post-256626 ) Whilst these were superb water effects I think we should be extremely thankful that they haven't been working for over a decade as they would of definitely been part of the inquest primarily given the fact that they would make it much more likely for someone to stand up. As I understand it, there were no water effects used during the time of the accident (maybe in the fog tunnel section?) but this is an important point nonetheless as surely there are rules that have been passed to prevent water effects being used on rides where you could easily stand up.
 
At some point patrons need to take responsibility for their actions and not assume a company will save them.

This might be an unpopular view but I don't blame the park at all, there were one, maybe two people responsible for this and the park cannot possibly be expected to cover all potential scenarios, yes the CCTV was lacking, yes they were probably wrong to not give the staff water rescue training, but come on how many rational people go round on one of these rides hanging out the side of the boat deliberately?

I went on a school trip a few weeks before this happened with my sons school, exact same age group, to a park down sarf, the school did a risk assessment too, they all have to, and that was fairly similar to one posted earlier, under no circumstances was a child allowed to ride either a Rollercoaster or water ride unaccompanied by an adult. Each group had 12 kids in and two adults, one a teacher, of the other responsible adults, ALL responsible adults had to pass an enhanced DBS check and go on a basic first aid course at the school before the trip, it was not a difficult set of instructions to follow, we were all given a credit card sized card that had everybody else's mobile number on, plus a custom map of all the first aid points and safety equipment that had been noted down on the risk assessment visit.

Even after all that preparation we still managed to loose one little sod who decided to go to the toilet without telling anybody, but nobody died because nobody was arrogant enough to think they knew better than a professional risk assessor and make a snap decision to let children go on a dangerous ride unaccompanied when they'd been told not to.

So blame the park all you like but had everybody else done their jobs properly this wouldn't have happened in the first place.
 
I'd love it if everyone were so rational, but I think that there are enough people that lack common sense in the country to warrant the need for warnings and monitoring on the ride and I'm sure that historical CCTV images showing the number of idiots not following the rules would confirm this. The park admit that it was clearly an issue that none of the misbehaving was observed despite it occurring during the entirety of the course in every hot spot. Had the warning been given, that could of changed everything.
 
Islander said:
Oh really? So before that there was no form of blocking or spacing on the ride at all? That seems crazy!


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Even up until Splash Canyon closed, it had no form of spacing whatsoever. Quite common on this ride type to be fair.
 
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