It's such an awful incident on a ride type I've been on at Hansa. Just like when The Smiler incident occurred, you simply don't expect something like that to happen with new ride hardware. It's easy to lay into the staff's reaction to the incident, but shock does very strange things to people. It can literally disconnect you from the reality of what's just happened, so I don't think their instantaneous reactions should necessarily be taken as being done with any sort of intent to be like that.
I'm going to speculate here with my own personal views, obviously the truth will come out in the official report. The restraints on Funtime's drop towers are designed to wrap around the rider, with a V shape on the OTSR that sits down in between your legs and curvature to allow the restraint to sit against the thighs. Likewise on the seat base, a curvature goes around the bottom of the thighs with a raised part in-between - very similar to many coaster restraints but more contoured. This photo from
Midway Mayhem on Twitter during the construction of the rides gives a view of the system:
Now I do believe the restraint was locked, the ride wouldn't have dispatched otherwise, but I do agree with
@RicketyCricket in that the height at which OTSR was locked resulted in them falling out. Where this design ultimately fails is due to those with larger upper bodies.
If the restraint can't go down any further due to someone's shoulders due to them being tall or being larger in the chest or stomach due to being obese, the shape of the restraint at the bottom is pointless as it is nowhere near securing against the thighs or near to the seat base. Without that v shape securing further down working in tandem with the seat base, it quickly renders that safety feature useless. I would even go so far to say that the raised part of the seat base probably contributed to the poor kid falling out so easily due to the very sloped angle:
Gut feeling is that seatbelts would've likely preventing this incident occurring. The wings on the OTSR, the wings on the seat base and the rails at the side would have probably preventing them slipping out. Interestingly, Funtime also produce slingshot rides, and their current generation (also installed at ICON park) use the exact same seat design but
with seatbelts (thanks again to Midway Mania).
So questions will no doubt be asked as to why seatbelts were determined to be required for the slingshot, but not for the drop tower. One could argue that it's due to the differing forces, but then again this drop down after all does tilt and does drop and subsequently brake with substantial force. I could also see the seat bases being redesigned and much stricter minimum close requirements on the rides.
I would be interested to see if the TUV in Germany asked for any stronger rules/requirements on Highlander than what was setup on ICON Park's model. I simply cannot see the TUV being anywhere near happy with a ride that's able to be dispatched with a restraint sitting that high. I seem to remember a harness recheck being carried out on one of our rides, and it was definitely nowhere near as high as it appears to have been sitting in this incident.
