Capital Eye by Randi Bjornstad
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Capital Eye by Randi Bjornstad
All across the country, schools are letting out, and families are looking forward to their long-awaited vacations.
For millions of them, this summer’s outings include visits to amusement parks, with their hair-raising, stomach-plunging, banshee-shrieking rides at amusement parks and traveling carnivals.
If all goes well, all those temptings-of-fate will end happily, but there’s no guarantee.
That’s because each year, thousands of people who innocently climb onto carnival rides in this country end up injured because of malfunctioning equipment. Most end up with a trip to the local emergency room, but some have to be hospitalized, and a few even die.
That’s an outcome that should never happen, but it does, in part because of a legal loophole that’s been in national law since 1981.
As Kathy Fackler, president of the nonprofit Saferparks organization, puts it, “that loophole means that stationary amusement park rides –as opposed to those operated by traveling carnivals, (are) the only U.S. products marketed to children that are exempt from all federal safety oversight.”
“It is simply indefensible for Congress to allow a special interest loophole of this magnitude in an industry that serves up high-speed thrills to 300 million paying customers every year,” Fackler says, “especially when most of the resulting injuries accrue to children.”
According to the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission, the most common failure on amusement park rides happens when seatbelts or other restraints give way during the ride. The second-most common problem involves riders who accidentally slip out of restraints they thought would protect them.
In those cases, just over half the victims of equipment failure are five years old or younger. Those accidents add up to hundreds of injuries every year. The bulk of the remainder of severe injuries and death occur to children 12 years or younger.
Other data amassed by the Consumer Products Safety Commission show that by far the greater number of injuries on amusement equipment happen in permanent parks, as opposed to traveling shows. In 2000, hospital emergency rooms throughout the country logged 10,580 visits because of injuries sustained on carnival rides.
Of those, 6,590 happened in fixed-ride parks, while only 3,990 occurred on traveling carnival rides.
One member of the U.S. Congress, Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts, has been struggling for years to bring more accountability to the carnival industry, especially to those who operate stationary parks.
This year, he has reintroduced legislation, H.R. 2500, which he calls the “National Amusement Park Ride Safety Act,” which would remove protections currently afforded to permanently fixed carnival rides, making them as accountable–and presumably as safe–as their traveling equivalents.
His bill would give the Consumer Products Safety Commission an additional $500,000 annually for additional monitoring and reporting of safety problems in permanent amusement parks.
“When families visit our amusement parks, they expect fundamental safety measures to already be in place,” Markey said in introducing his bill. “Instead, the industry keeps stonewalling these common sense safety protections, leaving the prosecution of responsible parties as the only deterrent left, and by then, it is often too late.”
The fatality rate per passenger mile on roller coasters “is higher than on passenger trains, passenger buses and passenger planes,” Markey said. “We cannot wait until the next accident happens–we need to address these loopholes in amusement ride safety now and stop playing roller-coaster-roulette with the lives of American families.”
Certainly, it makes no sense that stationary amusement parks should be shielded from scrutiny that applies to traveling carnival shows, and there is a remedy if Congress fails to act.
All it would take would be for millions of American families to stop patronizing permanently fixed amusement parks, instead spending their entertainment dollars visiting county and state fairs and migratory carnival operations in mall parking lots.
As Markey said on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, “This loophole is a dangerous gap in child safety and prevention, and it is having serious consequences. Since 1987, 64 people have died on an amusement park ride, and the vast majority of those deaths have occurred on rides that are totally; unregulated at the federal level.”
Maybe it’s not a large number. But if it’s your child, or your grandchild, or a beloved niece or nephew, it’s a number way; too devastating to be ignored.