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Incident on The Smiler 02/06/2015

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AliceHL91 said:
BPB Wild mouse! My arch nemesis. Migraine, neck and backache guaranteed! A good laugh though.
@Leah if you ever go to pleasure beach avoid this ride at all costs!
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I will!

Personally, not a fan (at all) of wild mouse's (wait... plural of wild mouse? Wild Mouse's, wild mice, wild mouses?) So, usually avoid them. Didn't Alton mouse crash under similar circumstances to the smiler (not as bad though).
 
Clearly the chances of more than one car entering the same block are statistically tiny, given how rarely it happens compared to the millions of rides taken around the world every day.

Multiple redundancies are required to further reduce the likelyhood of a chain of events coming together.

My humble Honda has anti lock breaking, electronic break distribution, dual circuit breaking system, etc. These reduce the likelihood of an accident. It then has seatbelts, side impact bars, airbags, crumple zones, etc to provide protection should an accident still occur.

There will always need to be an acceptable compromise between safety, likelyhood and cost. I'm sure rollercoasters are safe because they allready have multiple redundancies and perhaps in the future they will have more.

I believe that Merlin will do the right thing and do whatever needs to be done to prevent a recurrence.

I want rides that are SAFE, but have PERCEIVED danger.

I hope that it will always be 'Fright Time' with 'The World's Most Intense Ride Experience'.
 
Discussion is going a bit off topic here...The Smiler crash has lead to discussion about Baco's roughness. Fairly sure that should have it's own name paralleling Godwin's Law ;)
 
josht said:
Has anyone seen the HSE report yet ??
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Unless they release an interim report, I think this will be a long time coming, as in months.

The only references I can find on the HSE website are shortly after the incident.

Eg:

Http://press.hse.gov.uk/2015/statement-hses--investigation-into-the-incident-at-alton-towers/

There is also an article entitled executive statement update on the incident at Alton towers but when I paste the URL my spell checker insists on changing it to nonsense.

This second article from 05th July makes it clear whose decision it was to reopen the park.

Hope this helps.
 
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josht said:
Has anyone seen the HSE report yet ??
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You won't see another report now until legal proceedings have concluded, because anything released could potentially be prejudicial to any trial that might take place. The only time I have known an interim report be published in recent years was for the Buncefield explosion where important scientific knowledge about the nature of the explosion needed to be disseminated quickly to industry, because prosecutions can take years to get to court.

Normally if there is some generic issue that the HSE wants to get a message out, they will issue a Safety Bulletin, but without referring specifically to the accident that might have triggered the bulletin.

Even after all prosecutions have been completed, I doubt that a special report will be published. But the HSE internal report will be disclosable under Freedom of Information, and that is what will probably end up in the public domain. But again, that will only be releaseed after all legal proceedings are completed.

One clue of what might have caused the accident is if an improvement notice has been issued by the HSE to Merlin, which should appear on the HSE website in a few weeks time. But I haven't heard of any other notices being issued other than the original prohibition notice.
 
If the smiler did close (not that I'm saying it will) what would be the fate of saw? I'd assume they'd close that too.
 
It would stay open. If Saw had to close then surely every single Gerstlauer eurofighter/infinity coaster would have to close aswell?
 
I cant see any good reason for it closing unless there is a serious techical fault thats non resolvable. But that would meen other same coasters would also have the same fault and would be forced to close too. Its not gonna happen IMO
 
bluesonichd said:
I cant see any good reason for it closing unless there is a serious techical fault thats non resolvable. But that would meen other same coasters would also have the same fault and would be forced to close too. Its not gonna happen IMO
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That's what I thought. Tbh I thought saw would be back open by now
 
I'd have thought they want to wait until the investigation has progressed and they can be absolutely certain that the issue is not also present on Saw. Without knowing the exact cause of this crash, they can't yet know for certain.
 
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