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The Smiler Incident - What Happened

Didn't Mythbusters prove once and for all that the closing speed of two vehicles makes no difference to the impact? The cancel out. all that matters is the speed of ONE vehicle.

And anyway, only one of them was moving. and the stationary one was on rails with low friction wheels, so would have absorbed a lot of the impact.
 
DiogoJ42 said:
Didn't Mythbusters prove once and for all that the closing speed of two vehicles makes no difference to the impact? The cancel out. all that matters is the speed of ONE vehicle.

And anyway, only one of them was moving. and the stationary one was on rails with low friction wheels, so would have absorbed a lot of the impact.
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every action has an equal and opposite reaction

i can do science !
 
Up untill a week before the crash it was only using 4 trains due to the 5th still having its winter checks done (or whatever the reason was for it being off), so the staff on the day may still of been on 4 trains on track mode.
 
Rob said:
The HSE have said in a new report that engineers may have felt pressured into getting the ride open again as quickly as possible because of performance bonuses relating to the amount of downtime. Targets were set for the amount of downtime on each ride and clocks in the op cabin would highlight performance on downtime. The engineers believed that there were only four train on the circuit at the time so re-started the ride.

:)
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Wow New low. Hows about you pay a man/woman for doing an honest days work instead of relying on KPI's I guess with Hex closed the bonus for this year is buggered.

If there are staff bonuses they should be awarded on overall satisfaction and I'd question the ethics of a company offering bonuses in safety critical operations. How about we pay Brain surgeons based on the amount of punters they can get through in a day?
 
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DiogoJ42 said:
Didn't Mythbusters prove once and for all that the closing speed of two vehicles makes no difference to the impact? The cancel out. all that matters is the speed of ONE vehicle.

And anyway, only one of them was moving. and the stationary one was on rails with low friction wheels, so would have absorbed a lot of the impact.
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The screen shot of the yellow car is from that test BTW the car was going at 100MPH not 90.
 
RoyJess said:
No, a member of public could have made the call instead of videoing the incident on their camera phones :rolleyes:
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This summer I witnessed a serious incident at the British Grand Prix. The people in the surrounding area (including myself) were in shock, trying to clear the area to allow professionals in and indeed trying to find members of the public who may be professionally trained. We were in the stands and had no clear information to alert the medical teams of our exact position. We knew the on-site team would have this information (marshals and security/medical) so it was more productive to have them contact emergency services.
It's easy to look on and frown if you weren't there but consider people watching Will be in shock, they will assume that the operators knew about it and it was being dealt with if not by them then another member of the public also consider members of the public will not be familiar with the area or even the ride names sometimes.
 
TowerTigger said:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/alton-towers-smiler-rollercoaster-crash-8915166

5 trains had been entered into the log....

The engineers didn't bother to check the log or to establish exactly how many trains where operating. They assumed there was four... Quite a assumption to take when the system is telling you their is a stalled train on the tracks...
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You have to remember though that they had most likely had the exact same warning 3 4 5 times that morning. People on park had said it was having problems all morning. And whether we want to or not (and I'm not trying to make excuses) almost anyone starts to take short cuts and you end up with a boy that cried wolf situation.

On the 999 topic do we actually know nobody around the ride did phone? Even if they did it's not a lot of good an ambulance just turning up at the front gate. Security would need to let them in and direct them through an entrance (probably not the front door) to allow them fast, safe and effective access to the ride. 18 mins isn't all that bad a response time considering. By the time the operator saw what happened and realised what happened (he/she wouldnt have expected a colision) and then look for the appropriate number or protocol that is already 5 mins easily. The medical team then need to get their equipment and get to the smiler again easily 5 mins. The team then need to assess what is happening and what needs to be done. They then probably need to contact a manager who then contacts security who then organises an ambulance and it's entrance which easily accounts for the further 8 min.
 
Perhaps it was 17 minutes from the time it happened to the time Alton Towers called 999 (as opposed to the time that anybody called 999)? After all this is an investigation of Alton Towers' response. (Apologies if this has already been suggested, I haven't had time to read the whole thread yet.)

Another explanation is the 'bystander effect' - this is a social effect whereby people who might well help if they were the only person around don't help when there are lots of people around, possibly because they assume someone else is doing something.

Regarding staff not phoning - it's possible that junior members of staff didn't phone 999 because they felt they didn't have the authority to do so. An unnecessary 999 call is probably bad for AT, so they might have been concerned about taking on that 'risk' to their job (especially if they couldn't tell how serious it was). [Of course I don't know if this is the case, hopefully AT encourages all its staff to ring 999 in any emergency, it's just a possibility.]

andeyhart said:
Is it possible that the people on the ground genuinely didn't realise how bad the crash was?
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I think this is feasible - reading about it online and seeing the images on the news I knew that people were trapped and that special equipment was required to free them, but I didn't realise that at least one person came close to death. I suppose it depends how well people on the ground could see what was happening, particularly with respect to people's injuries. The riders could have been shouting for help due to their injuries (as was the case) or due to the shock and confusion of the situation (with this latter situation not necessarily requiring an ambulance).
 
I see the whole 999 debate as being indicative of modern culture that leads to things like this crash. We all like to challenge the authority of the system and the "establishment" on social media etc. But when it comes to the crunch, as a society we rely on these systems and processes that we say oppress us (someone else surley would've called 999, I'm sure they've got this all under control.... Haven't they?).

I think it has desensitised us from responsibility. Working for a large corporation myself, I could give you dozens of examples of when something happens that the business doesn't desire, it piles on more red tape and puts in new procedures in a desperate centralised attempt to maintain order in its business. It sounds like Merlin did exactly the same here.

The Smiler E stopping and throwing out fault codes so regularly probably made for just back ground noise and regular irritation after a while. Safe and legal records may have became lost in all the other ever increasing paper work the business was probably imposing. The down time targets became yet another tick box to meet amongst all the other red tape top down imposed on them and serious safety procedures get lost in all the noise.

I'm not condoning the actions of the individuals that made the fatal errors on the day, as they still choose to make those dreadful decisions. But working for a large organisation myself, I can see how trying to do "the right thing" by imposing ever increasing central procedures and policies in an attempt to get the desired output can actually cause accountability vs responsibility problems between employers and employees.

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In terms of the force, they said it was the EQUIVALENT of a 90mph car crash if I'm not mistaken...

Given that Smiler trains are probably a lot heavier than most cars, lack any form of absorption points (because why would they need it?), and pretty much had the front directly collide at a fair speed (probably 30-40mph at that point?), it all adds up as the force being applied by the moving train all going into the stationary one (which is why incidents with moving vehicles into stationary ones usually end up with more injuries)...

Plus, if we take F=ma, then a higher mass vehicle would only have a smaller rate of acceleration to reach a same amount of force to a lighter vehicle... Ergo whilst such a statement is perhaps overexaggerated somewhat, perhaps it's not that far off... You'd need proper stats to really work it out...



EDIT - Should also note that to be really exact there's many other equations that need considering, suvat, air resistance and the like... But that's confusing for a Tuesday morning...
 
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I'm amazed by the sheer amount of discussion surrounding the 999 call. Ultimately that is not the reason this incident happened and it probably made very little difference to the outcome. As many have said Towers do have their own first responders and they would have likely assessed the situation and then the appropriate 999 call would have been made. I can't imagine an air amblulance and all the equipment needed to assist those on The Smiler would have been sent out if Joe Blogs had called 999 saying that a rollercoaster had crashed but they had no idea on the extent of the injuries.

I think the Mirror calling for Varney's job is a tad harsh, especially seeing as he handled everything afterwards in an exemplary manner and was widely praised for this. I suppose it's because the judge has placed all blame on Merlin/Towers mangement althogh I am sure Varney is way above the level of how well are techies trained to do their jobs.

Regardless of procedures that were or were not good enough, I still think the individuals involved are being spared a lot of the blame. Okay the techies might not have known there were five trains on the circuit but the operator would have done, why was that such a lack of communication? It is clear to me that complacency came into it, whether that was because The Smiler had been having similar issues all day, because of potential bonus implications or something else I am not sure, but I still find it hard to believe that not one person working on the ride saw that a train had stalled and did not ensure that those in the op cabin knew. As we've seen from the CCTV released even a basic check of this by the op or techies would have revelaed a stalled train!

:)
 
I wonder if Varney and/or the victims are going to be in court today? Wandered past the court about half an hour ago and it was crawling with journalists and press vans lined up on the path
 
Dar said:
I wonder if Varney and/or the victims are going to be in court today? Wandered past the court about half an hour ago and it was crawling with journalists and press vans lined up on the path
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Nick Varney and Ian Crabbe are both there today. I'd imagine the victims will be also.

:)
 
Benzin said:
In terms of the force, they said it was the EQUIVALENT of a 90mph car crash if I'm not mistaken...

Given that Smiler trains are probably a lot heavier than most cars, lack any form of absorption points (because why would they need it?), and pretty much had the front directly collide at a fair speed (probably 30-40mph at that point?), it all adds up as the force being applied by the moving train all going into the stationary one (which is why incidents with moving vehicles into stationary ones usually end up with more injuries)...

Plus, if we take F=ma, then a higher mass vehicle would only have a smaller rate of acceleration to reach a same amount of force to a lighter vehicle... Ergo whilst such a statement is perhaps overexaggerated somewhat, perhaps it's not that far off... You'd need proper stats to really work it out...



EDIT - Should also note that to be really exact there's many other equations that need considering, suvat, air resistance and the like... But that's confusing for a Tuesday morning...
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I could be wrong but didn't they say it was the equivalent energy to a 90mph crash? That's an easy one to work out if they are correct, all you need are the numbers for the velocity and masses of the train/'family car'.

EDIT - A quick search says they reckon the family car is 1500kg

A bit of calculation says that a 1500kg car crash at 90mph is the same as a 40mph crash with a 7590kg (ish) train. That seems a little high to me.
 
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