Oakwood Park Faces Prosecution by HSE

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Oakwood Park Faces Prosecution by HSE

Postby Bob » 18 May 2007, 11:39

A THEME park faces prosecution by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) over the death of schoolgirl who plunged 100ft from a white knuckle ride.
A spokesman for the HSE said today: "We can confirm that a decision has been made regarding the involvement of Oakwood Leisure limited in the incident in 2004.

The HSE has met with Oakwood Leisure limited and informed them that it is the intention of the HSE to prosecute them under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. Section 3''
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Postby EAS » 18 May 2007, 11:53

Oh Bob, you little ray of sunshine you.

Considering the number of people who visit theme parks and go in rides each year it seems to me to have a rather better safety record than crossing the road.

Innocent of course until proven otherwise.
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Re: Oakwod Park Faces Prosecution by HSE

Postby stuart » 18 May 2007, 12:33

Bob wrote:A THEME park faces prosecution by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) over the death of schoolgirl who plunged 100ft from a white knuckle ride.
A spokesman for the HSE said today: "We can confirm that a decision has been made regarding the involvement of Oakwood Leisure limited in the incident in 2004.

The HSE has met with Oakwood Leisure limited and informed them that it is the intention of the HSE to prosecute them under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. Section 3''


Yes Bob, you are correct.

It's a perfect reason to close down viable amusement parks and build housing estates!
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Postby EAS » 18 May 2007, 12:34

The CPS of course considered the matter initially and did not prosecute.
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Postby furie » 18 May 2007, 15:08

Hmmm... This will be interesting to say the least. I've followed this very closely (as a fan of Oakwood).

The issue seems to be twofold. Firstly, Intamin (the ride manufacturers) had an issue with the restraints used. Three people have fallen out of them (though one was "over-weight" and the other "not fit to ride") so far.

Nobody is sure why the restraint in this case opened, but it appears to have been due to the girl getting her rain mac caught in the mechanism, and somehow prising the mechanism open. The train cannot leave the station with a restraint open or unlocked. How she did this is a bit of a mystery, but she managed it.

The problem was that her safety belt was also undone. This is a secondary fail safe in case the primary restraint should fail. It's unknown for certain if the belt was done up or not before the boat left.

CPS didn't prosecute, as it didn't really have a good enough case. The seatbelt could have been removed by the girl, and it's likely her struggling caused the restraint to open. Okay, a physical check would have proven that the Hydro staff weren't at fault, and the restraint should never be able to be opened by a 16 year old girl. However, the lack of evidence I think made it too difficult a case.

The HSE have it a bit easier though. I'm not entirely clear on the difference, it seems very subtle to be honest.

The ride has had its restraints completely replaced now and safety is painfully clear in the time taken to ensure this can't happen again. Intamin no longer supply rides with the lap restraints either, and instead now have a full over the should restraint system on their rides.

It's still more dangerous (statistically) driving to an amusement park than riding the rides.
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Postby Bob » 18 May 2007, 16:56

Newer rides tend to also have electronics as an additional backup to indicated to the ride operator whether the seat belts and locking bars are secure
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Postby EAS » 18 May 2007, 17:15

Gosh Bob - you've actually partly read what Furie has posted and regurgitated it!

How wonderful that you have some idea of how modern rides operate.

Not quite the class dunce then.
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Postby Jim Douglas Jr. » 18 May 2007, 19:43

This is the Save Dreamland forum.
This belongs in the "Amusement Parks and Theme Parks" section and will be tagged for relocation.
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Postby porf » 19 May 2007, 09:51

Just a quick note on the subject of topics being moved as it looks like this may need to happen more frequently.

I moved this topic to "Amusement Parks and Theme Parks" on Friday afternoon after the 3rd reply as it didn't relate to the campaign (it also didn't appear to have any point but that's another matter!)

Just a "pointer" topic remains in the Save Dreamland forum so the original poster can see where it's gone. The title line gets "Moved:" put in front of it to indicate this and the post count in that forum stays as it was at the time the topic was moved.

Clicking the "pointer" topic opens the topic from it's new area ("Amusement Parks and Theme Parks") complete with any replies made since it was moved.

The alternative is to not leave a "pointer" topic, the trouble is this tends to lead to accusations of topics being deleted.

Hope that explains the situation with this post.

p.s. I've corrected the title of the post as well - It's "Oakwood" !
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Postby Bob » 19 May 2007, 15:29

EAS wrote:Oh Bob, you little ray of sunshine you.

Considering the number of people who visit theme parks and go in rides each year it seems to me to have a rather better safety record than crossing the road.

Innocent of course until proven otherwise.


Statistically Fairgrounds are more dangerous then the roads. Highest risk is with the travelling fairs
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Postby EAS » 19 May 2007, 15:42

Now I'm starting to feel this is personal Bob - you do seem to target me to respond to - and Nick of course.

OK - quote me those statistics and your source? Bet you don't. You never do, do you? I reckon that's because (whisper) YOU MAKE IT ALL UP.

I do realise of course if I am going on an 'extreme' ride that there is a remote possibilty of an accident. Very remote.

I do of course also realise that when I walk down stairs I could fall and kill myself, and I could choke on a healthy apple - life has some risks.
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Postby furie » 19 May 2007, 22:50

I don't usually feed trolls, but I'm tired and irate tonight!

I can count at least once on every park visit I make (on average 50 or 60 a year), where one person in the party I'm with hasn't done up their seatbelt correctly, and the physical check picks it up.

The ride itself was well maintained, as are all of the rides at Oakwood. The fault lies in the ride itself. Nobody is quite sure exactly what the fault is, but it appears that under either high pressure, or some other circumstances, the Intamin lapbar restraints can open. It was 100% locked and secure when the boat left the station, and this was proven in court. The ride CANNOT leave the station if the restraint is not correctly locked. It was just an extremely unfortunate set of events which led to the death. The chances of one failing is extreme, the chances of both astonomical, but as Terry Pratchett says "million to one shots happen 9 times out of 10" [bad paraphrasing :lol: ].

Bob wrote:Statistically Fairgrounds are more dangerous then the roads. Highest risk is with the travelling fairs


According the Bob's big book of made-up statistics perhaps. I'll pojtn Bob here:

http://www.rideaccidents.com/

It looks like the kind of thing he'll have wet dreams over. the site is a list of every fatality on an amusement ride from around 1972 and about the last 10 years have details of all accidents too. If there has been an accident, it's probably listed there.

The statistics of course are around a 1 in 24 million chance of being injured on an amusement park ride, and 1 in one and a half billion of being Killed. This is based on the fact that around 319 million people visits parks and ride rides a year, but only around 134 (per annum) are admitted to hospital due to an accident.

I could easily find 134 ROAD accidents a week in Staffordshire which required hospitalisation, on a much smaller number of cars (than people going to parks).

Of course, I also don't have exact figures, and the statistics tend to be a bit wild, but the sources are well recognised and researchable, and above all, just blatantly obvious to anyone with an IQ higher than that of your average slug.
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Postby Vince, Charlie and Sam » 03 Jun 2007, 18:29

Bob wrote:
Statistically Fairgrounds are more dangerous then the roads.




For 2005, the last year for which figures are available...

There were no deaths on fairground rides in the UK.

There were 3,201 deaths on UK roads, and 271,017 injuries.


Another cracking post, Bob!
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