The Consumer Product Safety Commission was established by Congress in 1972 with the broad goal of creating a federal organization with the power to regulate goods that could endanger American consumers. Rides in amusement parks were covered by that initial directive. After all, they were consumer goods, devices that the general public paid to use with the fair expectation that someone had verified their safety. The CPSC held that power for around nine years. Congress then removed it in 1981.
Sometimes referred to as the “roller coaster loophole,” the 1981 legislation that stripped the CPSC of jurisdiction over permanently fixed amusement attractions actually completely changed the regulatory environment. The immediate cause was a series of contradictory court decisions pertaining to mishaps at Texas amusement parks, which raised questions about the proper use of the CPSC’s jurisdiction.
The ensuing misunderstanding served as leverage for the sector, which had been fighting against federal control. The modification was approved. Permanently fixed attractions at well-known theme parks were completely separated from the CPSC, but movable and traveling rides, such as the carnival that sets up in a shopping center parking lot or the fair that comes to town for a week, were still under its jurisdiction.
For more than 40 years, safety advocates have been criticizing this patchwork with varied degrees of legislative vigor. State governments are responsible for theme park ride safety at fixed parks in the absence of federal oversight, and they have responded with about the same consistency you’d expect from a voluntary system: some states have inspection agencies with significant authority and regular inspection cycles; others have given the responsibility to insurance companies conducting their own assessments; and some have essentially no dedicated mechanism at all. In one state, a ride that would be inspected twice a year might pass an unseen boundary into another where no government inspector is needed.
The ASTM F-24 Committee on Amusement Rides, a voluntary industry organization that creates safety regulations for the amusement sector, is the private standard that closes that gap. With input from engineers, manufacturers, and safety experts, ASTM F-24 creates standards that park operators actually apply. However, they are optional. Self-reporting is used to measure compliance. The structural tension that detractors find hardest to defend is that there is no government enforcement mechanism that can force a theme park to comply with ASTM standards, and the standards themselves are produced in part by the business they regulate.
Since 1981, the arguments on both sides of this policy dispute have essentially been the same, with each high-profile amusement park accident rekindling the discussion for a few news cycles before it fades. The industry argues that the current combination of private codes, insurance requirements, and state oversight creates a reasonably safe environment, that serious injuries at fixed theme parks are statistically rare, and that establishing a new federal bureaucracy to oversee an industry that largely regulates itself effectively would be expensive for taxpayers without yielding significant safety improvements. No CPSC jurisdiction restoration bill has reached a floor vote in either chamber due to the effectiveness of these arguments.
Advocates for consumer safety contend that underreporting contributes to the statistical rarity of serious injuries, that the current system lacks a trustworthy federal data collection mechanism, making it challenging to determine the actual injury rate, and that the degree of safety you experience as a visitor is largely dependent on the state in which the park is located. As proof that the voluntary system’s floor is lower than what the industry recognizes, they cite states that have no dedicated ride safety agencies.
