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M&D's Incident June 2016

Robert Jones said:
If it's the ride design at fault surely the manufacturer (someone said Pinfari) will be stumping most of the fine. M&D will struggle more from what will be the inevitable poor gates.
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Pinfari went under in 2004. This is almost certainly down to poor maintenance.
 
So far at least 4 wheel assemblies can be seen lying on the floor.... that is just.... words just can't even describe it tbh.
 
As others have said I'm shocked to have seen this in the news just now. Thoughts are with the families of those involved and I hope they are able to make a full recovery
 
RyanY said:
Pinfari went under in 2004. This is almost certainly down to poor maintenance.
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Agreed - Interpark came out of the ashes of Pinfari and they still use the name and some of their IP, but I imagine there is no legal method for claims against the previous company as its no longer a legal entity.

Not only that, you have a situation whereby the ride has been operating at the park for 12 years and that the ride predates its operation at M&Ds by almost the same amount of time.

Lordy said:
So far at least 4 wheel assemblies can be seen lying on the floor.... that is just.... words just can't even describe it tbh.
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I guess that's pretty shocking but keep in mind that this is similar to the Smiler accident whereby a set of events create a scenario that the hardware is not designed to deal with.
 
This will be the end of M&Ds, and if this is what passes for maintenance, good riddance. It's a miracle there's so few injuries, let alone no fatalities. Thoughts with the victims and their families, hopefully they will all make full recoveries.
 
Rick said:
I guess that's pretty shocking but keep in mind that this is similar to the Smiler accident whereby a set of events create a scenario that the hardware is not designed to deal with.
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A roller coaster should easily be able to deal with a single wheel set coming adrift without all the others following. It's not an unprecedented occurrence. Again, it should be well within the designed factors of safety in terms of forces exerted on the components. It happened on EGF not too long ago but in that case, the train stayed together. Of course, if it happens on the front or rear car, you will have issues but even so, the rest of the train shouldn't just tear itself off the tracks.
 
Terrible incident and from what I've seen it's a miracle no one died. This was a very old rollercoaster from a manufacturer that went out of business years ago and which never had a reputation for sterling build quality in the first place.

Whether it be age, rust, metal fatigue, lack of maintenance etc, it proves that though statistically safe, rollercoasters need to be inspected, maintained and have parts replaced, ideally with original manufacturer parts on a regular basis. Not all small parks can afford this and even the biggest operators must be held to the most rigorous of safety audits as airlines are.

I'm no expert but I'm wondering if this was a failure of the bogies / wheel asemmbalies as I note that several sets have landed away from the other wreckage.

Hoping that all involved make a full recovery.
 
Looks like it's one of the main stories on BBC news right now (though still not featuring before the referendum stuff that's been on every day for nearly a week). It will be on soon.
 
It is not unprecedented for a train to derail as a result of wheels or bogies becoming detached. The one that comes to mind is mindbender many years ago in which three people died. Fortunately this was an incredibly rare event.

I would hope that modern rollercoasters have multiple layers of redundancy to prevent a derailment in similar circumstances.
 
Altonadvocate1 said:
It is not unprecedented for a train to derail as a result of wheels or bogies becoming detached. The one that comes to mind is mindbender many years ago in which three people died. Fortunately this was an incredibly rare event.

I would hope that modern rollercoasters have multiple layers of redundancy to prevent a derailment in similar circumstances.
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Yes, but in that case, only the car with the failed wheel set derailed and unfortunately collided with a concrete pillar. Even then, it was still coupled to the other two cars which had stayed locked on the track.

In terms of what actually went wrong, Mindbender was not as catastrophic as this was, particularly when you consider that the Mindbender fault was caused by a mix up between metric and imperial fixings which seems unlikely in this case. It was just incredibly unfortunate that the part let go when it did. This incident had the potential to be much worse in my view.
 
Just found this online as well. I think, although you got the usual "coasters should be banned" people when The Smiler crashed, most people I saw seemed to be saying they couldn't believe it had happened because they felt AT was so safe, whereas everything I'm seeing about this is it was an accident waiting to happen/place is a death trap (or less *ahem* pre watershed wording).
http://stv.tv/news/west-central/1358702-theme-park-logs-eight-mechanical-failures-in-five-years/
 
Little Miss Angry said:
Scottish news are reporting three children are in a serious condition :(
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I liked your comment but only on the basis of you providing news. In Facebook terms it would have been an angry or sad face. I am sure the whole community will be wishing every person a speedy recovery. Let's just hope that everyone else can see this is the exception to the rule it is and not use it as a stick to beat the theme park fans with.
 
It's probably not fair to compare this to Mindbender, that was a very different set of circumstances in a different era.

In terms of this ride, it's certainly not produced by a company of high standing in the industry etc.

Also, I'm not an engineer - but I assume the physics of the thing would be different on an inverted coaster than a traditional coaster in the event of a mechanical failure like this.
 
I presume this type of incident would be down to the park's maintenance as opposed to the quality of the build by Pinfari? I know that there are Pinfari coasters at Brighton Pier, Brean, Adventure Island, and so on. So I wonder... what are the maintenance standards like in those locations in comparison to M&Ds?
 
Mind bender was the worst for actual injuries sustained/actual freakin deaths.

This is just in general the worst coaster incident of our time. It's a genuine miracle that nobody died on the scene.
 
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markfranklin said:
I presume this type of incident would be down to the park's maintenance as opposed to the quality of the build by Pinfari? I know that there are Pinfari coasters at Brighton Pier, Brean, Adventure Island, and so on. So I wonder... what are the maintenance standards like in those locations in comparison to M&Ds?
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It's perhaps a little too early to be calling out M&Ds in terms of liability, I don't think that's an avenue we should take at the moment. Parks often use external companies for NDT and various other aspects of the maintenance process and any other aspects of operation in line with HSG175.

Also, there is of course an inspection framework around the whole industry.
 
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