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Skyride General Discussion

venny said:
That’s exactly my point. Again, assuming it is a decision based on their capabilities rather than costs, the fact they cannot run the thing for more than 5 hours is an indictment of their operational capacity.
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Yeah I wasn’t particularly disagreeing with that sentiment, I was more suggesting that there does seem to be some actual competence in the management these days.

My understanding is it takes 3 years to become fully signed off as a techy at Towers these days so I think it’s going to be a slow journey.
 
Dave said:
Yeah I wasn’t particularly disagreeing with that sentiment, I was more suggesting that there does seem to be some actual competence in the management these days.

My understanding is it takes 3 years to become fully signed off as a techy at Towers these days so I think it’s going to be a slow journey.
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Since the Smiler incident, they did become serious with safety and signing off rides perhaps at a cost of why we have the staggered openings to this day.

Without what happened and how these rides bring run into the ground at Merlin parks constantly, the scary thing is we might have had a Smiler like incident one way or the other either with that or some other ride that could have been far worse so as it pains me to say it...that whole situation might have been a necessary evil for better ride safety at Merlin parks, even if it meant problems elsewhere like Skyride being out for so long.
 
I don’t think Merlin have ever scrimped on safety-critical ride maintenance.

You can say a lot of things about Merlin, but one thing I could personally never have said, before Smiler or after, is that I have ever felt unsafe at any of the parks or that any of the rides have ever felt improperly maintained from a safety standpoint. I have never felt anything but completely safe at a Merlin park, or any park for that matter.

The Smiler incident was a very, very unfortunate set of circumstances that did expose clear weaknesses in the human side of Merlin’s safety policies, but that is not to say that the parks were unsafe before. Just because something could be made safer, that is not to say that it is unsafe. The Smiler crash was a definite tragedy that the parks learned from and rightly changed policy following, but that is not to say that an incident like that was a guaranteed occurrence under the previous safety paradigm. It was still a once-in-a-billion accident that occurred due to a perfect storm of circumstances.
 
The Smiler was a Swiss Cheese style incident, where you have to have the gaps in procedure line up perfectly to cause an incident. The Skyride (like other Merlin rides to best of knowledge) has steps taken to reduce such a thing happening anyway. Not operating at night means the opportunity for a night evac gone wrong is gone for example, as is not operating at high winds prevents a gondola hitting a pylon as has been posted from a previous incident I believe in Talbot St.
 
Jb85 said:
@QTXAdsy i think it’s stretching to say without these measures we may of had another incident or worse. The Smiler incident- even with the procedures them was a one in a billion
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The incident was completely avoidable and a result of human error. I don't remember whether the operating manual was followed - it was an absolutely foreseeable situation.
 
Smiley said:
The incident was completely avoidable and a result of human error. I don't remember whether the operating manual was followed - it was an absolutely foreseeable situation.
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As many have said and I think even the investigation said. The incident was a perfect storm of events. This had absolutely nothing to do with the safety of the rides as was intimated in the original post.
 
Jb85 said:
As many have said and I think even the investigation said. The incident was a perfect storm of events. This had absolutely nothing to do with the safety of the rides as was intimated in the original post.
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The safety of the ride is without question. As for "a perfect storm", no - sorry. It was a simple case of not knowing how many cars were on the track. A very simple avoidable accident.
 
I’m here today, jokingly asked my wife if she was brave enough to ride on the first weekend back, but what d’ya know it’s facing a “temporary delay” and has been down for 10mins so far with passengers onboard over the valley.

It’s a hard pass from me 😂

(Update - it has now reopened)
 
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Quantum said:
Is it getting later and later every day?
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Earlier on the opening for sure. But also earlier on the closing time too, but that could match up with closing times of the park.

Jb85 said:
Far from the case but whatever
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Human error played a big part though, it did. The BBC and the Police, said that Jimmy Saville was normal, in many investigations and reports before his death. It doesnt and never did mean there were correct though. Sorry for the crude example, but it highlights the point I am making, very well.

The facts, as outlined in the documents state, an engineer, had to walk across half of the rides site, to a distant control panel, to override the safety block system via a satellite control panel.

The reason why the override isn't in the ops cab, but on the other side of the ride, is to make it as difficult as possible and so that the staff are 100% certain, the block system is safe to override, to prevent accidents exactly like what happened. The man who pressed the override, was also the engineer that had a clear view of the ride.

Apologies, this is the Skyride thread and not The Smiler.
 
Jb85 said:
Far from the case but whatever
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Well you tell me. I understand the control system implemented standard block protocol, as there was a car valleyed on the track. The engineer over-rode it. One of the main factors of the accident was that staff were unaware of this, and one reason for this is that they either couldn't count or didn't know how many cars were in the system. If they had they would never have over-ridden the safety system knowing there was a missing car somewhere on track.

Meanwhile, back at the Skyride.... Let's hope it has a good season - far too much walking otherwise!!
 
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