Congress eliminated the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s jurisdiction over amusement rides that were permanently stationed at one location in 1981. States were in a better position to regulate local parks than a federal body, according to the thinking at the time, which had to do with jurisdictional clarity and business lobbying. Forty-four years later, the outcome of that ruling is a patchwork of regulations so inconsistent that a ride can operate without the same level of scrutiny sixty miles across a state line while meeting strict safety standards in one state.
The goal of the National Amusement Park Ride Safety Act is to alter that. By reclassifying fixed-site amusement rides as consumer goods under the Consumer Product Safety Act, the measure eliminates the 1981 exemption and reinstates the CPSC’s jurisdiction. In practical terms, this means that instead of merely observing and deferring to whatever state framework exists in the relevant jurisdiction, the federal agency could, for the first time in over forty years, directly investigate serious accidents at theme parks, create corrective action plans when dangerous mechanical defects are discovered, and enforce compliance.
It is challenging to defend the current disparity because of the injury data. According to current estimates, there are about 22,000 hospital-treated amusement park injuries in the US each year. However, there is a big catch to these numbers: there is no centralized federal database that keeps track of this data. One would be established by the National Amusement Park Ride Safety Act. A single clearinghouse that gathers injury data and mechanical malfunction reports from all over the nation would accomplish something that the current system is unable to: it would enable patterns to be found across operators, ride manufacturers, and maintenance procedures before they result in further incidents rather than after.
There are clear drawbacks to the voluntary standards framework that now covers the regulatory void. The F-24 committee of ASTM International creates industry standards for amusement ride safety, which are technically available to any state that wishes to implement them. Many people do. However, “voluntary” and “variable” often go hand in hand, and states have adopted ASTM rules with varying degrees of thoroughness, enforcement strategies, and inspection schedules. As a result, the definition of “compliant” varies based on the location of the park.
When discussing the federal gap, Florida is frequently brought up as a case study. The biggest and most popular theme parks in the nation, such as Walt Disney World, Universal Studios, and SeaWorld, operate outside of both state and federal safety regulation because the state exempts parks with more than 1,000 employees from its ride safety inspection program. The justification for the exception was that big businesses have their own strict internal safety procedures. Serious occurrences at large Florida parks are quite uncommon, thus that may very well be the case. However, an argument based on independent verification differs from one that relies on the self-regulation of a profitable enterprise.
Additionally, the bill addresses operator training, advocating for more uniform standards throughout jurisdictions. This is important since ride operator training varies just as much as the laws governing the rides. Compared to their equivalent in a park in a more stringent jurisdiction, a seasonal worker running a rollercoaster in a state with lax training requirements would have received significantly less training. Without the national database the law would establish, it is difficult to determine whether that gap results in events. This is a rather circular issue that the legislation aims to resolve.
