In the summer of 2017, Tyler Jarrell, then sixteen, was hurled from a ride at the Ohio State Fair in Columbus. The Fire Ball was the name of the ride. Many people carried the memory of that night with them: the yelling, the mayhem, the abrupt and horrible reminder that carnival rides are not as unbeatable as they seem. Above all, it remained with his mother, Amber Duffield.
What came next was not instantaneous. Seldom are these things. However, in November 2019, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed Tyler’s Law, a piece of legislation named for the deceased boy and based on the notion that Ohio’s amusement ride safety needed to be seriously reevaluated. Duffield attended the signing. She continued to show up years later, this time at a state briefing, where she witnessed the regulations she had contributed to being put into place being explained to those in charge of enforcing them. “I’m getting a firsthand look,” she replied, “to see in person what we worked so hard to accomplish on paper.” There is a lot of weight to that statement.
Tyler’s Law introduced new inspection requirements based on American Society for Testing and Materials standards. These inspection requirements sound dry until you realize they are about determining whether the steel supporting a rollercoaster is corroding under access panels that most riders never consider. Owners of intermediate rides, towers, and coasters are required by law to perform comprehensive visual structural inspections every year, record their findings, give them to the Ohio Department of Agriculture, and retain those records for the duration of the ride. A registered professional engineer must take over if a ride has no remaining manufacturers—a situation known as an orphaned ride. That is an important detail. It fills a void that most likely shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
At a recent briefing, ODA Chief of Amusement Rides and Safety David Miran stated unequivocally that Ohio is leading the way. Depending on how you interpret it, that could be a bold declaration or a subdued criticism of everything else. The majority of states still have patchwork oversight; some only occasionally inspect rides, while others mainly rely on the integrity of the operators. Ohio is attempting something more methodical, at least for the time being.
Additionally, a second layer is currently being developed. The Real-Time Ride Status Notification Act, which was recently introduced by State Representative Sean Patrick Brennan, would mandate that Ohio’s permanent parks, such as Cedar Point and Kings Island, which attract families from all over the area, post real-time ride availability updates on digital signs and through their apps. These updates would need to be refreshed within five minutes of any changes. Families who drive long distances and spend real money should be informed before they have to wait in a forty-minute line that the ride was closed for maintenance an hour ago. This argument is almost embarrassingly reasonable.
It appears that Parks already keeps an internal record of this data. It would simply be made visible by the bill. Since no business enjoys being required by law to publicly announce its operational difficulties in real time, it’s possible that some operators will quietly resist. In the same way that people now anticipate seeing flight delays before they depart for the airport, there seems to be a growing public demand for this kind of transparency.
It’s still unclear if other states will observe Ohio’s strategy and take some cues from it. Political urgency is difficult to maintain because amusement ride fatalities are statistically uncommon. Rare, however, does not equate to zero. The family of Tyler Jarrell is aware of this. The uncomfortable realization that safety in any industry tends to improve most after someone gets hurt can be found somewhere in the structure of these new regulations, such as in the inspection logs, the engineer consultations, and the five-minute update windows.⁖※
