Incident on The Smiler 02/06/2015

[MaxPower]

I think this show how British media over exaggerates everything. Is it seriously going to effect park reputation... No. Are people not going to ride The Smiler... No. Are all theme parks now dangerous and could kill us without warning... No. By that logic the millions of people who take a plane are going to get fatally injured.

People are still riding the Runaway Mine Train, and it was a more unfortunate accident than this, In the grand scheme of things as insensitive as it may sound... No one lost their life. The people riding were unfortunately very lucky indeed.

The Runaway Mine Train accident was nowhere near as bad as this.

Yes, I agree the media are running away with things but this is a very serious incident which will be more detrimental to rides popularity than many people think.

 

[Craig]

The huge difference between this and RMT is that the RMT incident was mechanical (the coupling breaking off on the train), whereas there are so many other variables that could have caused this incident. The RMT incident was at a lower speed too, with mainly whiplash type injuries rather than any sort of crush injuries. The evacuation time was also much much lower. Away from that, the RMT incident was many years ago now, and the increased use of social media means things like this attract a hell of a lot more attention these days.

 

[Yalnix]

The Runaway Mine Train accident was nowhere near as bad as this.

Yes, I agree the media are running away with things but this is a very serious incident which will be more detrimental to rides popularity than many people think.

Is it though? Thats the thing, People have fallen off of Ferris Wheels and other such flat rides and die. People still ride them. Or alternatively just because of 9/11 doesn't mean people said "Well I'm not going in planes anymore"

I doubt it will seriously effect park reputation, perhaps The Smilers, but only short term.

 

[TomLad]

Just to assist people, a Diagram of what happened.

Already posted this bud Also don't pay any attention to this! Read number 3, it stopped on the inversion?

 

[DiogoJ42]

Just to assist people, a Diagram of what happened.

... drawn by someone with no understanding of physics who probably got their information from hysterical teenagers on twitter.

 

[Scott]

Just to assist people, a Diagram of what happened.

This is *not* a diagram of what happened. It is the reporting of non truths by the Daily Mail.

A train CANNOT stop on an inversion and then randomly continue. Gravity pulled it towards it's inevitable fate as soon as it left the lift hill.

 

[Bantanium]

Well bloody hell. I'll delete my post then, sorry

 

[jon81uk]

I have a hypothetical scenario. I'm not saying that this is in any way what happened but from my perspective as a design student, it's a situation that raises some interesting questions about human factors and liability.

-The stalled train was known about
-The train on the lift was intended to be reversed down the lift to be evacuated
-The ride was put into full manual mode
-The lift motor was accidentally run in the wrong direction
-As the train was at the top of the lift, there was not enough time to realise the mistake.

If this were the case, there is no way that this could have happened on any ride in the world other than The Smiler as it's the first roller coaster to feature this type of lift hill. This might explain why there was no system to prevent it from happening. It was a scenario that just hadn't been considered.

Also, if there was any ambiguity surrounding the lift hill control system that could easily lead to it being run in the wrong direction, unless the issue was flagged up, an incident of this type was probably inevitable.

If this was the case (and again, I'm not saying it is), would the ride operator be liable or would it be the designer of the control system? I'd always lean towards the opinion that rides should be designed in such a way that human error should not be a factor in the safe operation of the ride.

As far as I know it's only the second lift (vertical one) that needs to be reversed for evac, the first lift hill does a standard evac and there are photos of previous occasions with staff in harnesses releasing guests.

 

[Danny]

That 'diagram' just shows what a poor excuse for journalism the Daily Mail is.

 

[jon81uk]

This is *not* a diagram of what happened. It is the reporting of non truths by the Daily Mail.

A train CANNOT stop on an inversion and then randomly continue. Gravity pulled it towards it's inevitable fate as soon as it left the lift hill.

A lot of people seem to forget that the clue on how rollercoasters work is in the name, they roll and coast. Once realised at the top of the hill, gravity and momentum keep the train/car moving round the track until it hits the brakes. Unless the car doesn't have enough momentum to get over a high point of track and it stalls and rolls back, as the empty car did in this case. No rollercoasters has a motor or brakes on the car and very few have computers on board the car.

 

[Bantanium]

ask-humanised-nemesis:

I feel I need to say this;

The accident that happened at Alton Towers yesterday, looking at all the mechanics behind rollercoasters are nothing to do with human error, it is technically impossible for any human error to be involved in it. The only way it was human error was by allowing people on the train and that is that, the rest, going by the mechanical science of rollercoasters is literally mechanical error.

This was something an actual engineer posted on Alton Towers facebook page yesterday explaining the mechanics behind rollercoasters, please give it a read since it may educate a lot of people on rollercoasters and how they work:

“Just to clear something up as there have been roughly a thousand misunderstanding’s of how roller coasters actually work, and what went wrong.

Firstly we need to clear up that trains are not manually released by staff when they feel like, every roller coaster is controlled by a computer system that controls every action that happens, meaning that unless the ride’s computer thinks that it’s safe, it is impossible to release a train out of the station. Meaning that I could train a five year old how to operate a modern day attraction, like The Smiler, and he/she could do so safely with minimal knowledge

Next, I will define a ‘block’, a block is a piece of track that is designed to be independently completed from start to finish, and have a means of safely stopping a train at both the entry and exit of the block. In train logic, it is absolutely imperative that no more than one train occupies the same block at any time! This has been a fundament of roller coaster design since inception, and is the product of the well studied ‘Absolute Block Signalling System’ designed in the early 19th century.

The aforementioned computer is therefore responsible for controlling all of the block sections on the ride, and at no point should a train be allowed to enter a block if another train has not yet cleared it, regardless of the fitness of the ride.

Now that we understand the basic concept of how trains are allowed to travel around a track, let’s get onto my theory of what went wrong, which are mainly based off of assumptions, which are based of my personal knowledge and experience.

The empty train most probably had an error message when it arrived into the station from its previous run, indicating something wrong with the train itself, the standard practice is to send the train around again, as most of the time it’s an erroneous flag from a vibration or force sensor, which are calibrated have exceptionally low headroom for error. So the empty train was sent out to see if there was actually a problem, and if the message had’ve been persistent the train would’ve been removed. Unfortunately, for one reason or another the train failed to complete a full circuit, either due to an actual fault, as indicated by the sensor, or due to lack of momentum; as the train was empty. Either way the train cleared the first block; between the station and lift hill 1, cleared the lift hill, and entered the second block; between lift hill 1, and lift hill 2.

Now at the point the empty train cleared the lift hill, and entered block section 2, the ride’s computer would’ve indicated to the operator that it is safe for the next train to depart. Seeing that there is no problem with this train, the operator proceeds as normal, dispatching the second train.

After this, what should’ve happened is that the computer should’ve indicated that for some reason train 1 is taking longer than usual to complete the second block, and then it would’ve realised very quickly that the train had stalled mid block.

At this point, the second train should’ve come to a halt on the lift hill, and not, for any reason have entered block 2. This didn’t happen.

Instead, for some reason that I’m sure will be found, train 2 entered the block as normal, and we’re all here now!

This logically is impossible, however one or more system must’ve failed, resulting in the accident, at no point is Alton Towers responsible for this, nor are any of the operating staff or engineers. The blame lies solely with Gerslauer GmbH, for their failure to properly test their software and electronics. My only major fear is how many other Gestlauer attractions have the same fault, which are just waiting for this to happen again!

My heart goes out to all of those involved, and I hope that you all get over this horrible freak accident with haste! Furthermore a big well done needs to go out to the Emergency Services, Alton Towers, Merlin, and all of the operations staff involved for having such a fantastic, efficient and relaxed response to this incident, I am very proud to have been a part of the magic!

The Smiler will not close, it may be closed for an indefinite period for the meantime, but it will reopen either later this season, or at the start of the next season. Sorry to those planning a trip to alton, but I wouldn’t expect the smiler to be open for at least a month.

Lastly, do not fret, or become instantly terrified of roller coasters just because of this, though it won’t help, you are 18 times more likely to be killed during a dance party than you are to be injured whilst enjoying a theme park attraction, more people die on the way to theme parks every year than have ever been killed in the entirety of the worlds theme parks, and lastly the chances of it happening twice are practically impossible, making The Smiler the safest roller coaster in the world!

So don’t batten down the hatches, lock away your children, and cancel your tips. Instead#SMILEALWAYS”

So please, for the love of god, do not blame the staff for this accident since they were powerless to do anything instances before the crash happened and don’t blame it too much on human error.

Please don’t let this accident stop you from going on any coasters in the future, they are still the safest things to ride in the world and besides you’d all miss the thrill too much anyway.

Finally, please don’t let this affect your judgement on Alton Towers, this is the first time since the park opened that an accident like this has happened. The FIRST ever time since the 1950′s [i think that’s roughly when it opened] this has happened, every coaster at the park will always have its technical difficulties, this was just one difficulty that led to an accident. The park is still the safest park in the world and those who are injured luckily aren’t dead and even one of them are now out of hospital which brings some light to the situation.

That is all, apologies for the long post.

From Tumblr, have a read if you want

 

[MaxPower]

Is it though? Thats the thing, People have fallen off of Ferris Wheels and other such flat rides and die. People still ride them. Or alternatively just because of 9/11 doesn't mean people said "Well I'm not going in planes anymore"

I doubt it will seriously effect park reputation, perhaps The Smilers, but only short term.

People have been killed on theme park rides before now yes, but I can't remember an incident which has been as widely publicised as this. It's been on the front pages of newspapers as well as national and international news channels. In that respect, the damage has already been done.

I don't think the death on Hydro received as much attention as this and that affected Oakwood for a long time. This will hurt the park for the next couple of years, no question. As for the Smiler, the brand has been tarnished forever, which is why I feel it needs to be rebranded in the not too distant future.

 

[TomLad]

I quite like most of that tumblr post

 

[Danny]

The amount of armchair engineers, ride operators and roller coaster 'experts' that have come forward during this incident is ridiculous.

 

[Scott]

People have been killed on theme park rides before now yes, but I can't remember an incident which has been as widely publicised as this. It's been on the front pages of newspapers as well as national and international news channels.

I don't think the death on Hydro received as much attention as this. This will hurt the park for the next couple of years, no question. As for the Smiler, the brand has been tarnished forever.

Oakwood is in no way a national brand though. In fact outside of enthusiast circles it's probably not really known of outside Wales...

The reason this has been huge news is because it is Alton Towers. A brand which is nationally (and to a lesser extent internationally) known and loved.

It's also the biggest ride incident that the country has seen in decades. Combine all that and you can understand the massive attention. However, news is very fickle and I imagine this will have all but gone away by the start of next week.

The brand of The Smiler will be hugely tarnished but Alton Towers probably won't see much hurt. Maybe from corporate and school bookings the rest of this year but certainly not elsewhere. If anything the park and brand have been praised for their reaction to and communication aboht the event.

 

[delta79]

West Midland Ambulance Service blog has a few posts, link to two of them below
https://officialwmas.wordpress.com/2015/06/02/alton-towers-update-3/

https://officialwmas.wordpress.com/2015/06/02/alton-towers-incident-interviews-2/

 

[Josef Charlatan]

So much of that long post is wrong, blocks aren't 'timed', merely cleared, and as far as I'm aware the cars don't have force sensors on? As a lurker, this thread has done extremely well to keep speculation and, as Danny puts it, 'Armchair Engineering' to a minimum. To point a finger at Gerstlauer over this is really quite ridiculous before it's been cleared, especially with the media's coverage of this situation.

 

[Stelios]

Given that "everyone's an expert" in this sort of situation, but thanks again Bantanium for sharing this, adds quite the twist to this tale. If it is Gerts. fault, how can there be other evidence to prove it is there fault without any other accidents on the two rides of recent years similar to the technology and build of The Smiler? This is where I feel The Towers may have to still compensate in a sense. Regardless, this deserves to be spread about rather than just on tumblr, certainly one of the more "anonymous ride expert" sources on the social media that is the more thorough.

 

[GaryH]

Tell you what though, it's a good job that the stalled car was free to move on the track. The impact was absorbed by it to some extent hence it rocking back and forth. If it was truly stationary and unable to move, we'd be looking at fatalities now.

 

[TomLad]

However, news is very fickle and I imagine this will have all but gone away by the start of next week.

Thinks back to when the Ebola outbreak was, for all media intents and purposes, over due them getting bored of the story