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Blackpool Pleasure Beach: 2024 Discussion

rob666 said:
Always a fun one to add...What about the Flying Machines?
High and fast, not a belt in sight.
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But yet they are compulsory on Alice !

I agree with @Bowser in that just because a ride was built in a time when seatbelts were not required doesn't mean that the safety standards of today wont require them.

Having ridden the reel (without a seat belt) , I can guarantee if it were still running today then health and safety would require it to have restraints.
 
Bowser said:
Saying a ride doesn’t “need” seat belts because it didn’t when built doesn’t quite add up. Health and safety standards change over time. Modern seatbelts as we recognise didn’t even exist till the 1950s.

Cars don’t “need” seatbelts either but they’ve been demonstrated to save lives.
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Fair enough respect your opinion.
 
Legislation say rides must by operated in line with the manufacturer guidelines and as designed to do so. . So if no seat belt supplied none. Required.

Seatbelts on Nash rev nick streak grandprix Alice Wallace and so on are purely to get cheaper insurance as they restrain a guest from standing.
 
shakey said:
Having ridden the reel (without a seat belt) , I can guarantee if it were still running today then health and safety would require it to have restraints.
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Cannot remember for life of me if the Tubtwist over in Great Yarmouth (the closest relative to the Reel) has any restraining system in place.
 
The UK doesn’t have any specific legislation aimed at theme park rides. In fact, the UK doesn’t have a lot of specific legislation, which is something that the Grenfell Tower fire inquiry has highlighted. However, there is general safety legislation that can be applied to theme park rides. Most notably the Health and Safety at Work Act. When theme parks are prosecuted for breaches of health and safety, it’s often for not complying with the Health and Safety at Work Act, which gives businesses a duty to manage risk.

In the UK we do have something called Approved Codes of Practice (ACOPS) which are written by the HSE (Health and Safety Executive) in conjunction with industries. Following the ACOPS is supposed to demonstrate that a business is following the Health and Safety at Work Act, although the ACOPS aren’t technically legislation. There are lots of ACOPS that would apply to theme park rides, but the one aimed specifically at theme park rides is HGS175. https://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/books/hsg175.htm

HSG175 says that an amusement ride should have a safety doc (there are a minority of rides such as go karts that may be inspected under other schemes). Until recently all safety docs were issued under a scheme called ADIPS, although there is an alternative scheme now called LEAPS which some parks use, including Paultons Park and Flamingo Land. Blackpool Pleasure Beach currently uses ADIPS.
https://adips.co.uk/
www.leapscheme.com

LEAPS | Leisure Equipment & Asset Protection Scheme

The Leisure Equipment & Asset Protection Scheme (LEAPS) ensures that the engineering used day in and day out for fun and play is safe and reliable.
www.leapscheme.com www.leapscheme.com

The inspectors who issued the safety docs may require a park to modify a ride (for example adding seatbelts) for them to issue a new safety doc. This is generally to make sure the ride complies with international standards (EN standards and ISO standards in the UK).

Insurance companies don’t normally get that involved in how theme parks operate, but they probably would require all the rides to have a safety doc, so if the independent inspector from the inspection body required them to add seatbelts, the insurance company effectively would do so by proxy.

The legal situation around theme park rides is complex with criminal and civil law, sentencing guidelines, precedents, ACOPS and technical standards, and various pieces of legislation that have been bolted onto the Health and Safety at Work Act, often in response to EU directives from when we were in the EU. But there’s no legislation specifically around theme park ride design.

Do legacy rides need modifying to bring them up to current standards, or are they ‘grandfathered’? It’s a complicated area.
 
Benzin said:
Cannot remember for life of me if the Tubtwist over in Great Yarmouth (the closest relative to the Reel) has any restraining system in place.
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It doesn't. You're just sat in the tub unrestrained.

To be fair, though, that one isn't as big as the Blackpool woodies.
 
Benzin said:
Cannot remember for life of me if the Tubtwist over in Great Yarmouth (the closest relative to the Reel) has any restraining system in place.
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No it doesn't, but it is nothing like the reel at Blackpool. Its like comparing a Wacky Worm with the Big One.

@rob666 rode it more than me and i am sure he could testify how bonkers it was. It would definitely not be allowed to operate without restraints today if it were still running.
 
Generally you would expect any part of a ride that's been upgraded/modified would then be expected to meet modern standards (e.g. putting new trains on an existing ride) but rides built under old standards/before standards are not strictly required to undergo modifications. That's the theory at least - whether that would subsequently hold up if an incident occurred is another matter!

If built today, I'd expect the manufacturer of a ride like Flying Machines to consider passenger misbehaviour as a possible reason that restraints may be required, even though the ride dynamics mean they would not normally be required as there aren't really any forces pushing you out of the seat. By way of example, I believe the seat belts on DMP's Wave Swinger can't be opened during a ride cycle for this reason. Despite this improvement existing, I don't think there's any suggestion that CWoA should be forced to upgrade theirs
 
It’d definitely say it’s a grey area. Using the Monkey Swinger example, it’s clearly operating with a current safety DOC, so you could argue that it’s not ‘required’ to. Although as John said, having a safety DOC doesn’t necessarily prevent you from being prosecuted if there is a serious accident.

You do get technical bulletins advising parks to modify older attractions. These can be issued by the manufacturer (if they’re still in business), NAFLIC (the trade association representing ride inspectors), ADIPS/LEAPS (the organisation that manages the safety DOCs) or the HSE. They’re normally advisories. Some inspectors will be more forceful than others about wanting the ride to meet any new technical bulletins before they issue a safety DOC.

The HSE uses the words ‘reasonable and practical’ a lot. That’s open to a lot of interpretation. With older rides it would sometimes be very difficult to bring them up to modern standards. For example if the clearance envelope is smaller than the modern standard, it might be very difficult to move supports. Arguably something like fitting seatbelts is a relatively simple modification.

Part of the argument for grand fathering is that the ride has shown itself to be safe through safe operation without accidents or incidents. That does assume that the park has good record keeping, that any accidents or incidents have been properly investigated and that the ride does have a good safety record.

If an older ride has more inherent risks, it then places more onus on alternative control measures, whether that’s signage, safety announcements, staff training etc.
 
Grandfathering rights in also allows for the fact older vehicles might not have the correct places for securing seat belts, without comprehensive reinforcement. For example, my car has no rear seatbelts and has nowhere strong enough to mount them where it'd be even remotely useful in an incident. I imagine this can apply to ride vehicles as well.
 
shakey said:
No it doesn't, but it is nothing like the reel at Blackpool. Its like comparing a Wacky Worm with the Big One.

@rob666 rode it more than me and i am sure he could testify how bonkers it was. It would definitely not be allowed to operate without restraints today if it were still running.
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Back in the seventies, I had several strange young ladies thrown into my lap, who I then assisted getting to the end of the ride somewhere near to their original spot on the circular bench seat.
No complaints.
There was a handrail around the edge of the seat, which was the perfect excuse to put your arms around complete strangers.
Nearest modern ride to compare to is Storm Surge at Thorpe, which we also had a great time on a couple of weeks ago.
 
Oh, what do HSE require for Tagadas now?

The last time I went on one, it was very much the case that if you didn't end up on the floor, you were doing it wrong. And to keep thing on topic, that may or may not have been Trauma Towers at BPB.
 
Taken from a letter from the HSE to inspection bodies, found on the ADIPS website

1728214249940.png

Basically, a Tagada should not get a DOC unless it has either had suitable restraints fitted or has been physically slowed down/modified to ensure it cannot produce ejection forces.

Full document available on: https://adips.co.uk/safety-information/ (search for Tagada under NAFLIC technical bulletins)
 
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