The moment you fasten your seatbelt on a roller coaster has an almost disarming quality. You’re moving in a matter of seconds after the operator gives the thumbs-up and the lap bar clicks down. You have an innate sense that someone has ensured this is secure. An official with a clipboard and power, such as an inspector, regulator, or government agency. For the most part, that feeling is a delusion.
In the US, amusement park safety oversight is actually much messier. The large fixed-site parks, the ones with the tall steel coasters and multi-story water slides, are not guarded by any federal agency. The Consumer Product Safety Commission does oversee mobile rides and traveling carnivals, but federal jurisdiction ends the moment a park establishes itself permanently. The big theme parks have invested a lot of money in lobbying to keep things that way, and so far they have.
What’s left is a patchwork, state by state, that varies from genuinely serious to nearly nonexistent. The International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions reports that 44 states have some sort of amusement ride regulation. That may seem comforting, but only 20 of those states exhibit what safety experts refer to as thorough oversight. The remaining 24 have written regulations, but depending on your position, the requirements for enforcement and inspections vary greatly.
There is absolutely no state-level oversight in six states: Alabama, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, Wyoming, and Utah. For example, there is no state law requiring inspections or requiring parks to report accidents when visitors ride in Nevada. The gap is filled by self-regulation, which is another way of saying that the industry primarily assigns its own grades.
The example that sticks with you is Kansas. A 10-year-old boy died on a 168-foot water slide in a park outside of Wichita in 2016. It was not an unexpected, sudden tragedy. Thirteen people had suffered severe injuries on the same ride in the two years prior to his passing. Annual inspections were mandated in Kansas, but they were conducted by private inspectors, and state officials were never required to receive the reports. No one in a position of authority within the government was making the connection. The state tightened everything it had previously disregarded when it passed the Kansas Amusement Ride Act in 2017 in response to public outcry. It’s worthwhile to quietly inquire as to why a child’s death was necessary for that to occur.
ASTM International, an organization that creates voluntary safety standards for amusement rides, has been the industry’s response to uneven regulation. There is some baseline consistency because about 35 states cite ASTM guidelines in their own regulations. However, the key word is voluntary. A standard that isn’t enforced is more akin to a suggestion, and suggestions don’t always withstand the strain of maintaining a park during a busy summer.
This system’s evolution has a certain historical awkwardness. A remnant of the days when traveling fairs were set up next to livestock competitions at county fairgrounds, many state agencies that regulate amusement rides are housed inside departments of agriculture. Technically, agriculture officials are now in charge of the security of rides that bring in hundreds of millions of dollars a year. It’s the kind of institutional mismatch that is difficult to describe without laughing, but the repercussions are not amusing.
Sensors, predictive maintenance systems, and real-time monitoring are examples of how technology is advancing, and some states with robust programs—like Pennsylvania—run truly strict inspection frameworks. However, you shouldn’t be fortunate enough to live close to serious oversight. It is hard to explain the difference between what a child in Kansas went through and what a family in Pennsylvania can anticipate from the same industry, in the same nation. In states where reporting is not mandatory, it is difficult to avoid wondering how many more near-misses are currently going unreported.
