• ℹ️ Heads up...

    This is a popular topic that is fast moving Guest - before posting, please ensure that you check out the first post in the topic for a quick reminder of guidelines, and importantly a summary of the known facts and information so far. Thanks.

Drayton Manor Park - Splash Canyon Incident

When an incident occurs on a ride the law is very clear. The park has to assume full responsibility for the guest. The only exception is if the guest intentionally does something that puts themselves in danger despite the operator doing everything within their power to prevent them from doing so. In which case they become responsible for their own actions, unless they need to be accompanied (as per the ride restrictions) in which case their guardian is responsible.

In this case the School could only be responsible if she required accompaniment, which I don't belive she did. This only leaves two conclusions:
1) She stood up despite signs and announcement reminding guests not to, causing her to fall in. In this case Drayton are in the clear.
2) The warnings weren't displayed well enough or she fell out due to a problem with the ride and therefore Drayton would be to blame.

If the incident was caught on CCTV I'm sure Drayton will already know the answer to this. The fact they haven't claimed full responsibility like Merlin did suggests they don't belive they were at fault.
 
I severely doubt the park will be found responsible for this tragedy. After all, the ride in question is of a well proven and long established design that has operated with an impeccable safety record the world over for 4 decades. I very much doubt the ride was operated in any major way that was contrary to the manufacturers instructions.

If the family do find the park at fault for something, it will unlikely be for the design or day to day operation or maintenance of the ride. I would be very surprised if lack of safety nets, lack of restraints, strength of current or depth of water in the channel will be considered contributory factors. Neither are any features that get the rider wet likely to be held against the park as this is an important part of the design of the ride and should be well known to riders.

I would also be surprised if the process the school followed will get an major critism either, as has already been mentioned, their processes are usually pretty robust and routine.

Any finger pointed at the park will most likely be regarding their response to the incident I would have thought. Perhaps even a criticism of how clear their instrucrions are to riders.

I don't think this is a "where there's a blame there's claim" or "health and safety gone mad!" kind of case. We must remember that an 11 year old child perishing just for standing up on a rapids boat is a disproportionate outcome.
 
themeparkfan said:
But would there not be a case by the parents saying that their children should have been verbally warned not to do it? Did I also read somewhere that this poor girl wasn't aware she was going there until she arrived at school that morning? If so when did her parents fill out consent forms etc?
Click to expand...

I think you are getting confused. It has been reported that she turned up that morning in clothes not suitable for a theme park visit so had to borrow some from a friend. I have seen no suggestion that she did not know she was going on the trip until that morning.

Matthew is right, you should not die if you stand up on a rapids. Yes you are breaking a rule but as has been said before all of us on here have done it in the past and here we are. Without knowing the full circumstances it would seem that this is a tragic and terribly unfortunate event. Can you really blame a child for doing what we all have? I don't think so. Can you blame the school? From what we know then certainly not. Can you blame Drayton? I'd be surprised, although I cannot remember off the top of my head I am sure there is sufficient signage and annoucements on the ride relating to safety issues. However I do expect it to be found that these could be enhanced, especially as Towers have found it necessary to do that.

Sometimes there is no real blame in such an accident, it's just that, an accident.

:)
 
Also remember, 11 years old, not 14, 16 etc. You may say an 11 year old is old enough to know right from wrong, they are, but in the eyes of the law, they're still not considered responsible enough to legally be left on their own at home.

I'm with Themeparkfan on this one, if they're going to sue the park, then they need to sue the school too, since it's them who had the legal duty of care to ensure the safety of the students within their care at all times.
 
Even if they didn't really have much of a case, threatening legal action could just be enough to get a small back-hander via an out of court settlement. Some people may want to just move on with their lives and accept that terrible accidents sometimes happen. Others may want to squeeze any possible money out of any situation.
 
I presume that the mother was bombarded with insurance cold callers touting for business and Drayton manor will be duty bound to have public liability insurance in place which should payout if the theme park is at fault.

There is some contradiction in the reporting of this tragic event, so I'll take a lot of it with a pinch of salt until the H&S and inquest release their findings.

I've been riding the rapids for years and I usually have several goes each time I visit and I can honestly say that I've never ever stood up during the ride, you can simply avoid getting wet simply by either wearing suitable waterproofs or just by slightly twisting or leaning out of the way of the waterfalls or the water blasters, but my bottom never leaves the seat. Expect to get wet on water rides and if f you don't want to get wet and you are not wearing waterproofs, then don't even go on a water ride.
 
BarryZola said:
Some people may want to just move on with their lives and accept that terrible accidents sometimes happen. Others may want to squeeze any possible money out of any situation.
Click to expand...

You've just described my cousin down to a t without ever meeting them, congrats...
 
IanSR said:
I'm with Themeparkfan on this one, if they're going to sue the park, then they need to sue the school too, since it's them who had the legal duty of care to ensure the safety of the students within their care at all times.
Click to expand...
Except as I just pointed out it is not "at all times". From the moment they were loaded onto the ride her safety becomes the responsibility of the rides operator. Even if the teacher had behaved irresponsibly (for example inapropriatley grouping them or not enforcing the safety restrictions) it is ultimately the operator and their team who have legal responsibility. Only an act of gross negligence (for example telling the children to jump out of the boats) would make the school liable and we know this is not the case.

Personally I think no one is truly to blame for this incident. As far as I can tell the park operated the ride in the normal manner and the girl (while she might have foolishly stood up) didn't behaved any differently to how someone else might of acted. However if the parents have decided to sue (which is a totally reasonable action) aqusations are going to be made.

I expect the courts will rule in favour of Drayton but expect minor changes to be made. As someone who has worked as a ride operator I do think the 1.1m unaccompanied height is a bit low (the standard at the park I worked at was 1.4m). However the first time I rode Splash Canyon I was 11, riding in a boat with only other kids, 1 of which was 2 years younger than me. Nothing happened to us, neither has it happened to anyone else in the 15 years since.
 
I get what you're saying but it's not that black and white imho. I do agree that on the face of it, it appears this is nothing more than an accident, but we all know we've long since dispensed with accepting accidents as accidents and someone is always responsible nowdays, if that wasn't the case schools wouldn't have to do risk assessments and rides wouldn't have more safety warnings on than moving parts.

Also, iirc there was a Supreme Court ruling a few years ago where five judges ruled that a school cannot delegate it's duty of care to third parties, which kind of makes your, valid, point moot, in the eyes of the law, the School is responsible for the safety of the students when in their care, period.
 
I agree that someone will be taking responsibility, but it will not be the school.

This is one of those cases where the law is very clear, "your ride, your responsibility". If it wasn't Theme Parks could get away with just about anything by blaming someone else.

As a minimum wage, overworked ride operator it sucks because the law is pointing at you and says "no matter what happens the blame comes back to you". However by avoiding the responsibility being diluted between different people it stops many accidents from happening because people have disagreed who's in charge and both have said "it's not my problem".

To talk about another incident at a Staffordshire based Park I can garments that incident would have been avoided if the operator had been in full control of the situation.
 
But I don't think this is as black and white as "who dunnit'?". Sometimes, unfortunate chains of events occur, that can't be REASONABLY foreseen, that end up leading to tragedies.

Now, that's different to ruling that certain parties could have done more. But, unlike the Smiler incident where gross negligence was clearly to blame and it was obvious who was at fault immediately, in this case nobody did anything obviously negligent to result in the disproportionate outcome of a death!

The park should not expect that operating a rapids ride in a completely normal manner would carry any significant danger of someones death. The school should not expect any of their 11 year old pupils to die from simply putting them on a boat on their own. And that poor little girl, although she broke the rules, shouldn't have died just by standing up to swap seats.

I know there is a widely held misconception that "health and safety nonsense" is getting out of control "these days" but the fact of the matter is, health and safety legislation has actually changed very little since the 70's. It's the nature of the way this legislation is written for it to naturally evolve as it's based on risk assessing and learning from mistakes as they occur over the years. Contrary to popular belief, the HSE aren't solely looking for someone to blame against a strict and rigid, black and white checklist of policies and procedures.

Within the first few pages of this thread, fingers where being pointed around everywhere in an attempt to apportion blame. Although I accept that there where probably some failings somewhere in the events that lead to this tragedy, no one party seems to have done anything that should negligent enough to have resulted in a death, including the girl herself.
 
I largely agree with @matthewgcole, I would say the main error was that she stood up, but the fact that had an unfortunate ending is mainly based on luck.

The only other change I could see that may have helped is the rule on 1.1m and above being allowed on with no supervision. As someone else said (maybe in the AT General topic) there are some rapids where is is 1.4m without supervision. This would of course cause issues for some school trips, but one adult to every 7 kids is possible I guess.
 
What i think they should do is make a rule where anyone under 16 must ride with an adult, regardless of their height.
 
Rick said:
BBC News reporting that Evha Jannath died of chest injuries, not drowning as I think some people had theorised.
Click to expand...
Link doesn't work, here's another one:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-39953060

An 11-year-old girl who fell from a theme park water ride suffered fatal chest injuries, police have said.

Evha Jannath, from Leicester, was on a school trip when she fell from the Splash Canyon ride at Drayton Manor Theme Park on 9 May.

An inquest into her death was opened and adjourned on Wednesday.

The South Staffordshire Coroner's office said she died from "blunt force chest trauma" and a further inquest hearing would be heard on Tuesday.

Staffordshire Police and the Health and Safety Executive are jointly investigating the incident at the park.

More than 100 mourners attended Evha's funeral service at Saffron Hill Cemetery in Leicester on Tuesday.

The Muslim Burial Council of Leicestershire said Evha's death had "touched the hearts of many people".

The theme park, near Tamworth, Staffordshire, closed for three days following the death but reopened on Saturday.
Click to expand...
 
Intamin been building Rapids rides since 1979. This is the 1st recorded death on this type of ride.
I think the ride will now stay closed for the remaining of this season and if the H&S make Drayton Manor put better safety measures into place then all other Intamin Rapids will be forced to as well.
 
Themeparksandy1981 said:
Intamin been building Rapids rides since 1979. This is the 1st recorded death on this type of ride.
I think the ride will now stay closed for the remaining of this season and if the H&S make Drayton Manor put better safety measures into place then all other Intamin Rapids will be forced to as well.
Click to expand...

There was a death on an Intamin Rapids at Parc Astrix
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top