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.
