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The Smiler Incident - What Happened
- Thread starter Rob
- Start date
MaxPower
TS Member
There's only so many procedures that can be put in place to mitigate for this sort of thing.
At some point, common sense from individuals has to come into consideration. If a system is flagging a problem such as it did, as a trained engineer, would it not be unthinkable to actually take a look at that section of the ride? Even very briefly?
I dislike Merlin as much as the next person, but it seems the lack of competence demonstrated by the staff members involved was much more concerning than the lack of procedures from Merlin.
At some point, common sense from individuals has to come into consideration. If a system is flagging a problem such as it did, as a trained engineer, would it not be unthinkable to actually take a look at that section of the ride? Even very briefly?
I dislike Merlin as much as the next person, but it seems the lack of competence demonstrated by the staff members involved was much more concerning than the lack of procedures from Merlin.
Croftybaby
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Nemesis
It depends if you are paying people to follow your instructions and press buttons or actually use their Brains and initiative.
Tom
TS Member
Not in this case.
If the system allows for a person to restart the ride without knowing how many trains are on the track, there lies the blame.
The incident was caused by the employee in question accounting for four trains, unbeknown to them there were five that should have been accounted for.
Grand_Nash
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Nemesis
Having read the files I have come to the following thoughts.
The ride ops team were well trained, understood the ride and how it operated. They also knew all the relevant files that needed to be filled in, and what to do in a scenario happened. Eg ride evac etc.
The problem comes from the tech support who were not as well trained, didn't follow a set procedure as there was none in place. If ride ops are made to note the trains in service then tech support didn't have the procedure in place to check. It may be common sense but tech services may have never known that document existed.
Also actually reading it there was a belief the ride system was inadequate by tech servicea and to over ride the block needed two people to do so, one on each lift hill so how the hell didn't anybody see the train in the 10 minutes it's crazy.
The way it seems to me is Alton Towers sat back on the good record, management never checked tech services procedures as there was a culture of self belief it wouldn't happen to them. Instead of focussing on Ritas tunnel they should have audited all departments on site.
I support alton towers but i must admit the report shocked me
The ride ops team were well trained, understood the ride and how it operated. They also knew all the relevant files that needed to be filled in, and what to do in a scenario happened. Eg ride evac etc.
The problem comes from the tech support who were not as well trained, didn't follow a set procedure as there was none in place. If ride ops are made to note the trains in service then tech support didn't have the procedure in place to check. It may be common sense but tech services may have never known that document existed.
Also actually reading it there was a belief the ride system was inadequate by tech servicea and to over ride the block needed two people to do so, one on each lift hill so how the hell didn't anybody see the train in the 10 minutes it's crazy.
The way it seems to me is Alton Towers sat back on the good record, management never checked tech services procedures as there was a culture of self belief it wouldn't happen to them. Instead of focussing on Ritas tunnel they should have audited all departments on site.
I support alton towers but i must admit the report shocked me
Matt.GC
TS Member
I think when you strangle people with regulation, rules and procedures for everything, they stop using iniative and become button pressers and pen pushers.
I'm a firm believer that if you bombard people with too many targets and rules to follow you discourage people from thinking for themselves and they quickly loose the distinction between red line between legal, safety, business critical regs and all the other nonsense. Nurses and police officers complain about this all the time. An employer should train, coach, motivate and engage with its employees to deliver its objectives and only dictate, enforce and audit the real serious stuff or the "red lines".
In this case, the need to get the ride going again blinkered the engineer into making a catastrophic error. Of course he deserves blame for that, but his employer should be ensuring he has clear, concise and defined rules and procedures to follow. This investigation suggests that the distinction between business objectives and critical controls where not clear enough in the company or Park culture.
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discoinferno
I hate to repeat myself but this accident was essentially caused by a lack of common sense. You can have the most experienced well-trained engineer in the World but anybody in that situation should have checked the whole track for any obstacles. You should never assume anything in such a dangerous environment. I'm not one for witch-hunts but if I was one of the victims, I would want to see that (or those) individual(s) in the dock for what happened. That's not to excuse Merlin for their incompetence which certainly contributed to the crash.
James
TS Founding Member
Anyone's that's ever worked knows you pick up short cuts in your job, you learn common things that pop up, things to ignore and things to take notice of. You do your job in an automatic way from how you've been taught the job and get comfortable with what you do. In intensive jobs you're so under pressure to complete the task quickly you don't spend those extra 5 minutes working on your own initiative in fear of being shafted by those above you and missing targets set.
The fact that staffed have been pushed to open rides quickly to gain bonuses over ensuring full customer safety says it all really.
It's easy to expect 'common sense' although clearly Alton Towers and Merlin Entertainments have created a system that doesn't make or prompt staff to thing ahead, and in this case flawed systems has shown how poorly managed this part of their operations is.
The fact that staffed have been pushed to open rides quickly to gain bonuses over ensuring full customer safety says it all really.
It's easy to expect 'common sense' although clearly Alton Towers and Merlin Entertainments have created a system that doesn't make or prompt staff to thing ahead, and in this case flawed systems has shown how poorly managed this part of their operations is.
Grand_Nash
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Nemesis
For all we know the people on tech support may have been newbies, its important to remember the HSE found the tech suport team were not issuing training it was done visually as in the senior would show, and crucially best bad habits get picked up. Ride ops had to sit a test and ensure they knew, tech services didn't. If you started this year and remember to them its a job they might never know that the smiler stalls so why would they check? It may seem common sense but unless you have a check list to say before this is done you need to do X then in theory they can do what they have been shown to do before
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Altonadvocate1
TS Member
What happened was terrible, and clearly changes need to be, and have been made to prevent this from happening again.
The safety protocols that Merlin had in place, were clearly good enough to prevent an accident of this nature in hundreds of millions of rides in their the parks around the world.
I'm not sure that it will ever be possible to anticipate and make provision to prevent EVERY possible scenario that could lead to an accident, paticularly one so statistically unlikely to occur. I'd love to know what the 30 changes to the safety protocols that Merlin have introduced, are.
Like it or not, there will always be compromises between safety, security and efficiency, and this applies to EVERYTHING, not just rollercoasters. Unless we have a vast area on the approach to an airport where every visitor is separated by a distance greater than an anticipated blast radius and subject to xray, strip and body cavity searches it cannot be GUARANTEED that a faction cannot get an explosive device into an airport, but to do this would make commercial aviation impossible.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and it is very easy for lawyers to make sweeping generalisations about "woefully inadequate safety procedures' after the event. Perhaps the legislation, and audit procedures of the HSE themselves should be called into question.
Sympathy for the victims, yes, compensation, yes, learning lessons and improving safety, yes, but an ongoing which hunt against a company employing thousands of people, no.
Incidentally, The Mirror, are demanding that Nick Varney be sacked this morning. There are many things on which I disagree with Nick profounduly (his opposition to the living wage for example) but I don't think that as the top man he cannot know EVERY single thing that happens in his organisation, and I DO believe that he has responded to these events with sincerity.
Sidenote: as a person in relatively low ranked employment, I have 18 separate KPI targets to achieve. I think the world has gone target mad, and that this culture does not for the most part improve service or efficiency.None of my targets, however put lives at risk.
If engineers are under pressure to get rides up and running to meet bonus targets due to a very low base salary, then this DOES need to be addressed!
PAY PEOPLE A FAIR WAGE AND DO THIS BY REDUCING THE OBSCENE DIFFERENTIALS IN PAY BETWEEN THE PEOPLE ON THE GROUND AND THE PEOPLE AT THE TOP.
Oh and by the way.
Merlin Entertainments
Revenue £1,27866 million 2015
"Obscenely overpaid" (mirrors words not mine) Nick Varney pay 2015 - £744,000 (1.6 million including bonuses for the 12 month period).
Trinity Mirror
Revenue £636.6 million
CEO Simon Fox "earned" 1.2 million for a 4 month period in 2012.
They are both overpayed, bur seriously Mirror - people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
The Mirror regularly runs headlines about company's paying huge salaries to bosses whilst paying thousands of workers a pittance. It names and shames companies that do this. Guess which company is never mentioned as doing this (clue: they publish a range of national and regional newspapers) HYPOCRITES!
The safety protocols that Merlin had in place, were clearly good enough to prevent an accident of this nature in hundreds of millions of rides in their the parks around the world.
I'm not sure that it will ever be possible to anticipate and make provision to prevent EVERY possible scenario that could lead to an accident, paticularly one so statistically unlikely to occur. I'd love to know what the 30 changes to the safety protocols that Merlin have introduced, are.
Like it or not, there will always be compromises between safety, security and efficiency, and this applies to EVERYTHING, not just rollercoasters. Unless we have a vast area on the approach to an airport where every visitor is separated by a distance greater than an anticipated blast radius and subject to xray, strip and body cavity searches it cannot be GUARANTEED that a faction cannot get an explosive device into an airport, but to do this would make commercial aviation impossible.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and it is very easy for lawyers to make sweeping generalisations about "woefully inadequate safety procedures' after the event. Perhaps the legislation, and audit procedures of the HSE themselves should be called into question.
Sympathy for the victims, yes, compensation, yes, learning lessons and improving safety, yes, but an ongoing which hunt against a company employing thousands of people, no.
Incidentally, The Mirror, are demanding that Nick Varney be sacked this morning. There are many things on which I disagree with Nick profounduly (his opposition to the living wage for example) but I don't think that as the top man he cannot know EVERY single thing that happens in his organisation, and I DO believe that he has responded to these events with sincerity.
Sidenote: as a person in relatively low ranked employment, I have 18 separate KPI targets to achieve. I think the world has gone target mad, and that this culture does not for the most part improve service or efficiency.None of my targets, however put lives at risk.
If engineers are under pressure to get rides up and running to meet bonus targets due to a very low base salary, then this DOES need to be addressed!
PAY PEOPLE A FAIR WAGE AND DO THIS BY REDUCING THE OBSCENE DIFFERENTIALS IN PAY BETWEEN THE PEOPLE ON THE GROUND AND THE PEOPLE AT THE TOP.
Oh and by the way.
Merlin Entertainments
Revenue £1,27866 million 2015
"Obscenely overpaid" (mirrors words not mine) Nick Varney pay 2015 - £744,000 (1.6 million including bonuses for the 12 month period).
Trinity Mirror
Revenue £636.6 million
CEO Simon Fox "earned" 1.2 million for a 4 month period in 2012.
They are both overpayed, bur seriously Mirror - people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
The Mirror regularly runs headlines about company's paying huge salaries to bosses whilst paying thousands of workers a pittance. It names and shames companies that do this. Guess which company is never mentioned as doing this (clue: they publish a range of national and regional newspapers) HYPOCRITES!
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BlondeGeek691
TS Member
OK so I dont know about Altons specific working procedures but from my background (8 years working in oil and gas automation and medical robotic systems) I do have a lot of experience that might be helpful.
Firstly with regards to the 999 (I know this has been thoroughly hashed so sorry if anyone is fed up of this). A lot of large sites with an on site medical team, I mean one which is made up of paramedics and the like not just first aiders, will have an internal 999 equivalent which the staff will be told to use in the event of an emergency. I would assume Alton towers has a system similar to this as it allows the first responders to be dispatched while a central person in the medical centre co-ordinates contacting the emergency services. I would say it is quite possible that there would be a delay in calling 999 as the first responders would need to assess the situation in order to determine which services they are going to need.
I dont think it's as simple as that, they say the kinetic energy involved was equivalent to a 90mph collision. I'm assuming this means the total kinetic energy so you would have to also consider the energy transferred to the stalled train. The stalled train was free to move and so some of the energy would have been transferred into moving the stalled train along the track and some will have been lost through friction against the track
.
Some of you on here will be old enough to remember the Piper Alpha disaster, the reason it ended up being so horrific is very similar to the situation with the Smiler. Something happened which although not standard operating conditions should not have caused an incident (i.e the stalled train). Because of miscommunication and lack of sufficient operating procedures the incident was compounded. Some people made assumptions based on experience that turned out to be incorrect. As a result what shouldn't even have been an indecent turned out to be a major catastrophe (in the case of Piper Alpha 167 deaths). In response to this the Oil and Gas industry now has rigorous health and safety procedures, things must be checked and double checked and as a whole it is now much safer. The Smiler incident will have the same effect (or should that be affect, I'm never sure), it is very sad that it happened and in hindsight it shouldn't have, but as a result things at Alton will now be a lot safer than they have ever been and hopefully other parks in the UK will also review their procedures and look for any possible gaps.
Wow that was longer than I expected, sorry if I waffled a bit!
Firstly with regards to the 999 (I know this has been thoroughly hashed so sorry if anyone is fed up of this). A lot of large sites with an on site medical team, I mean one which is made up of paramedics and the like not just first aiders, will have an internal 999 equivalent which the staff will be told to use in the event of an emergency. I would assume Alton towers has a system similar to this as it allows the first responders to be dispatched while a central person in the medical centre co-ordinates contacting the emergency services. I would say it is quite possible that there would be a delay in calling 999 as the first responders would need to assess the situation in order to determine which services they are going to need.
I dont think it's as simple as that, they say the kinetic energy involved was equivalent to a 90mph collision. I'm assuming this means the total kinetic energy so you would have to also consider the energy transferred to the stalled train. The stalled train was free to move and so some of the energy would have been transferred into moving the stalled train along the track and some will have been lost through friction against the track
.
Some of you on here will be old enough to remember the Piper Alpha disaster, the reason it ended up being so horrific is very similar to the situation with the Smiler. Something happened which although not standard operating conditions should not have caused an incident (i.e the stalled train). Because of miscommunication and lack of sufficient operating procedures the incident was compounded. Some people made assumptions based on experience that turned out to be incorrect. As a result what shouldn't even have been an indecent turned out to be a major catastrophe (in the case of Piper Alpha 167 deaths). In response to this the Oil and Gas industry now has rigorous health and safety procedures, things must be checked and double checked and as a whole it is now much safer. The Smiler incident will have the same effect (or should that be affect, I'm never sure), it is very sad that it happened and in hindsight it shouldn't have, but as a result things at Alton will now be a lot safer than they have ever been and hopefully other parks in the UK will also review their procedures and look for any possible gaps.
Wow that was longer than I expected, sorry if I waffled a bit!
TomLad
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Nemesis/Dragon Khan
Energy transferred to the stalled train is a momentum issue, not kinetic energy as they were saying. The stalled train wasn't moving so had 0 kinetic energy. As long as they literally did mean the kinetic energy involved, it really is that simple.
BlondeGeek691
TS Member
Sorry that was a total blonde moment, I was thinking they meant the energy absorbed by the full train during the collision. So allowing for 1000kg for the passengers that puts the train at just under 6.5T, bearing in mind a luton van is 3.5T does that sound right? I have no idea how much the Smiler trains weigh.
Dave
TS Founding Member
It's the responsibility of the company to ensure procedures are in place to operate safety, if they are in place and staff fail to follow them then it's the employees fault (though mostly the company still takes the blame).
It baffles me though how these techies managed to not spot the train, it's clear it was visabke both directly and on CCTV so there is a level of stupidity but if there is no training and no procedure on top of a target driven culture then it's Merlins fault.
Got to love a company that installs 18ft high fences for no reason (not all their fencing is pointless) but gets basic H&S so very wrong.
delta79
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Nemesis, Air
This does bring up question about cross department health and safety. It seem there is no h&s oversight across the park.
I just don't think all blame should lie with Merlin. Yes, bad working conditions and non existent procedures create the potential for disaster, and Merlin's push for downtime to be eradicated at literally all costs is pretty disturbing. But surely, even with no structured procedure to deal with this type of breakdown in place, you don't need to be told that if there's an empty mega-tonne ride cart valleyed on the track, don't reset the ride! And I'm still baffled as to how there was such a blatant lack of communication between the techs and the ride operator over how many carts were actually on the track. Surely Merlin were safe to assume their ride staff could count to five.
This may seem like I'm defending Merlin, and if so, I can assure you that definitely isn't my intention. This was undeniably a case of gross procedural inadequacy that put peoples' lives at risk, and Merlin deserved to be punished for that. I just don't feel the ride tech staff are deserving of the total absolution the court has handed down to them, because they are definitely not blameless victims in all this.
This may seem like I'm defending Merlin, and if so, I can assure you that definitely isn't my intention. This was undeniably a case of gross procedural inadequacy that put peoples' lives at risk, and Merlin deserved to be punished for that. I just don't feel the ride tech staff are deserving of the total absolution the court has handed down to them, because they are definitely not blameless victims in all this.
Tech staff are not blameless victims, because they are not victims, they are staff.
Merlin failed to train them properly, and failed to give them thorough procedures to follow.
The victims were injured customers, the rest of us were possible victims.
I don't appreciate having my life repeatedly put at risk in the chase for corporate profit.
All the blame lies with Merlin, due to a gross disregard for H&S, lack of appropriate training and procedures, and bonuses for getting rides open quickly after "issues".
My social work training from about two decades ago...
Proper protection and procedures prevents p!ss poor performance.
First days basic training...big red capital letters on the whiteboard.
Never forgotten it, don't think I ever will.
This is all Merlin's fault, the judge said so, Merlin agreed and pleaded guilty.
Merlin failed to train them properly, and failed to give them thorough procedures to follow.
The victims were injured customers, the rest of us were possible victims.
I don't appreciate having my life repeatedly put at risk in the chase for corporate profit.
All the blame lies with Merlin, due to a gross disregard for H&S, lack of appropriate training and procedures, and bonuses for getting rides open quickly after "issues".
My social work training from about two decades ago...
Proper protection and procedures prevents p!ss poor performance.
First days basic training...big red capital letters on the whiteboard.
Never forgotten it, don't think I ever will.
This is all Merlin's fault, the judge said so, Merlin agreed and pleaded guilty.
I'm sorry, I don't fully agree with that. The ride staff and tech staff have to take responsibilty for some of their own failings. They didn't see a valleyed train that was not difficult to miss, not to mention the fact it was on CCTV - you don't need extensive staff training to tell you that if a coaster is stuck on the track, then it's not a good idea to send another one hurtling straight at it! Yes, Merlin's procedures were woefully and dangerously inadequate, and they deserved to be punished. But, for me, there were mistakes that came down to individual laziness, and that cannot all be blamed on Merlin. If I made a gross error at work, despite having not received proper training and having been exposed to bad working conditions, I'd still feel personal responsibility for my actions. I know Merlin enforced a worrying system where low downtime equalled staff bonuses, which is a disastrously poor work ethic to enforce, but it would still only have taken a few minutes to assess the track and check the CCTV properly, something the tech staff failed to do.
Fact is, had they seen the stalled train, they would not have reset the ride. That wouldn't change the fact that there was no set procedure in place to deal with this incident, something Merlin should be ashamed of, but it would have avoided a hideous incident taking place. Of course, the judge has ruled that Merlin are 100% to blame, and the punishment has been duly passed down, but I personally feel the tech staff involved in this have gotten off slightly lightly.