At that carnival in Austin in December 2005, the line for the Sizzler was probably the typical mix of weary parents and restless children. Fatima Cervantes was nine years old. Her brother was eight years old. They climbed into one of those candy-colored cars with revolving arms that, until they start moving, appear almost cartoonish. Fatima slipped beneath the lap bar a few seconds later. Her head was caught by the metal arm. She didn’t make it.
Looking back at the reporting, it’s not just the death that has stuck with me. It’s the little shrug of bureaucracy that came next. In a meeting regarding the Sizzler’s record, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is in charge of traveling rides, requested that operators give “greater attention to safety.” That was all. No changes are necessary. No memory. For decades, the industry has been remarkably adept at not listening, so this was just a courteous suggestion.
The term “roller coaster loophole” is used by regulators in a half-joking, half-bitter manner. It alludes to a 1981 carve-out that took control of fixed-site amusement rides away from the federal government. Disney, Universal, Busch Gardens, and SeaWorld are all intentionally exempt from federal regulation. Although mobile carnivals are officially under the CPSC’s jurisdiction, the organization does not have a full-time employee devoted to ride safety, and its 90 field investigators, who are primarily located on the East Coast, are in charge of about 15,000 product categories. The ride is frequently already broken down and trucked to the next county by the time they arrive at an accident scene.
The states remain. To be honest, the states are a complete mess. There are no inspection laws at all in six of them: Alabama, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, Wyoming, and Utah. Not one. Without a single government official seeing it, a ride can be put together in a Tupelo parking lot, run for a weekend, and then move on. The industry claims that there aren’t many amusement parks in these states, which is partially true and partially irrelevant. With its wooden coaster and long summer crowds, Utah’s Lagoon is anything but a roadside attraction.
Not all states that do regulate do so on their own. Many have merely adopted the private organization ASTM International’s standards; in cases where these standards have not been formally adopted, compliance becomes a matter of corporate goodwill. It’s an odd approach to managing public safety. Consider the scenario where a local restaurant inspector was employed by the establishment.
Multiple blunt impact injuries were listed as the cause of death for the man in his thirties who perished on Universal’s new Stardust Racers coaster at Epic Universe this September. The inquiry is still in progress. The fact that Florida’s largest parks are not subject to state safety inspections is something that most visitors are unaware of. They are only obliged to report the injury after it has occurred, and they create their own procedures and conduct their own inspections. A man purchases a ticket, gives his ID to a cheerful attendant, and gets on a coaster that was designed and examined by the business that makes money off of it. Even before anything goes wrong, there’s a subtle unease about that arrangement.
The child restraint system on a grocery shopping cart is more standardized than the harness on a ride that can reach speeds of up to 100 miles per hour, critics have pointed out with a sharpness that feels well-earned. The CPSC estimates that amusement-related injuries cause about 37,000 ER visits annually, but even that number is uncertain because reporting is not mandated. Nothing that no one is counting can be fixed.
As expected, the industry uses actual funds to lobby against stricter regulations. Riders are frequently held responsible for accidents, which is sometimes accurate and other times a convenient narrative. Although suing after the fact has never been much of a safety tactic, lawsuits continue to be the primary accountability mechanism. It’s difficult to avoid thinking that something will eventually need to change. How many more rides it takes is the question.
