Accident at Alton Towers

[SaiyanHajime]

I would have thought they will try and encourage a stall, to test any newly implemented safety features and procedures for staff should it ever stall again. It seems a bit mad to risk doing that when the park is open to guests though, because they're not going to understand what they're witnessing... I dunno about up in the midlands, but it's been super cold and windy down here, perfect stalling weather.

 

[Hyde]

Indeed, if Alton is not planning for opening the roller coaster this season, why are they testing? Wait until the off-season to finalize and test all modifications, and start fresh with the new season, with complete zero mention of the ride's reopening.

 

[Martyn B]

The park confirmed on Facebook and Twitter that The Smiler will not be open for Scarefest.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

But they're never going to admit it anyway, especially on social network. I'm not saying it IS going to open for Scare fest, but I believe there is a very good chance.

 

[SaiyanHajime]

Indeed, if Alton is not planning for opening the roller coaster this season, why are they testing? Wait until the off-season to finalize and test all modifications, and start fresh with the new season, with complete zero mention of the ride's reopening.

Yeah, the only thing I can think of is that doing it now means they can use realistic staffing scenarios, maybe in hope of testing the nerfed capacity and other such operational issues, seeing how the implemented H&S actually affects staff? I don't know, guessing. I think they must have some, or have had some, minor intent of opening before the season was out. It's not looking likely now though.

 

[T0M]

The testing time required before all those concerned are satisfied it can open will be considerable. This will be particularly true given the procedural changes associated with the stopping in high winds etc that the new sensors suggest.

 

[AirtimeFreak]

I was there on Saturday and there was no sign of any trains being sent round, empty or with water dummies.

The X-sector however is completely dead and Oblivion will be a walk on all day

 

[davidm]

Fallout from this ; BBC reporting;

Staffordshire theme park Alton Towers say it is cutting up to 190 salaried jobs by March next year.

In a statement the company says the jobs will go by March next year. The job losses will be a combination of early retirement, non-replacement of existing vacancies, and reployment elsewhere in the company, as well as voluntary redundancies.

Edit ; link -> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-st ... e-34771289

 

[SilverArrow]

190 is quite a lot of people.

It says "salaried" people. I assume that some of the on-park people (retail, rides, catering etc) are paid per hour so this is more supervisory and management people going, hence the word "restructure" being used. Can't imagine it's going to be a positive step however it happens.

 

[Ben]

20% of your workforce is a massive chunk to get rid of, hope it doesn't have too much of a knock-on effect.

I'd presume something similar on a smaller scale might happen at some of the other attractions.

That place is run by corporate suits which is a real shame - if they had some balls they'd go all out to move on from the accident and make people forget it by just having the park be tip top.

The fireworks were a good start they were insanely good and must have cost loads!

 

[Smithy]

Dare say that they may be taking advantage of the accident and the financial figures to have a clear out of staff that they've been wanting to do for a while. But that's cynical me.

 

[cjbrandy]

^ Definitely a possibility, it is an extremely large cut after all. Perhaps so large that there would be more scrutiny if it weren't for the incident.

 

[davidm]

Human error caused Alton Towers rollercoaster crash in June that seriously injured five people, UK theme park says

The safety control system was manually overridden without the proper protocols being followed, an investigation concluded.

No technical or mechanical issues were found with the ride itself

Guess the report is coming out now then ; http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-34911943

[tweet]https://twitter.com/PA/status/669133841873903617[/tweet]

 

[SilverArrow]

And the enthusiasts were pretty much right all along! We know our stuff haha, (or people are just too nerdy).

 

[Ian]

I know the word "relieved" is inappropriate seeing as two ladies had life changing injuries, but it is reassuring that the safety systems built into the coaster infrastructure were reliable and, presumably, working correctly. Most machines are only as reliable as the person operating it.

We still don't know what the cause of the "human error" was. Did they override the safety system? Did they ignore warnings? That is still unclear. Whatever the reason, neglecting the safety procedure is wrong. I look forward to hearing the reasons behind the "human error".

 

[Smithy]

As a lot of us thought would be the case, sadly.

The biggest issue now for the park ignoring the masses of tabloid garbage that will be thrown over the case and the sob stories we'll hear about being bullied on twitter will be did the park put any pressure on those responsible to bypass these safety features; how far up the management chain were these decisions made? Was it just one engineer overriding the safety system? Was he told to do so or worse, trained to do so, by a senior engineer? Was he in turn told to do anything to keep the ride open by his area manager?

I doubt most of these things will be made public, but hopefully this at least brings some closure and the park can move forward.

 

[Martyn B]

Going by the BBC article, it was a manual override.

Good of them to announce it's to reopen next year now, let the media have their storm before the actual opening.

 

[Smithy]

Yeah two important parts from Alton Towers statement are the confirmation that the ride will be re-opening next year, and that the additional safety measures include somebody senior to be present when re-setting the ride as well as several manual reset's located around the ride which I think was mooted on here when some pictures popped up.

I mean, it'd be nice if they try and fix that cobra roll to stop it from valleying again, but maybe that'll happen in the off season.

 

[Robbie]

I still think there are wider issues probably not covered by the investigation, in that it the human who over-rode the safety protocols probably did so because of several months of failures. It was just unfortunate this one time there really was an issue. The park really need to look at how the ride was built and fix that, but that may not have been covered in the HSE investigation and so they may not bother.

 

[Ian]

Maybe they need some sort of reset system where two keys have to be turned simultaneously by two people, like in a spy film or something.

I do hope that this reassures the public that coasters are mechanically, technically robust in terms of safety. The safety systems were doing what they were supposed to do. It's the inept "human" who caused the accident, not the coaster itself. This should never, ever happen again.

 

[spicy]

From the info in that article, it's safe to assume that my previous guess was correct. Following the breakdown an engineer reset the ride because it threw up a fault that he'd literally just reset a minute ago. Except this time, the ride wasn't lying. That's my bet. He's wrong for not checking, but he's also human acting on instincts, emotion and accumulated knowledge.

Still this.


I think from the moment we found out the train stopped on the lift hill for a while before restarting into the stalled train it was known that this was going to be down to a manual over ride and therefore human error.

I mean, it'd be nice if they try and fix that cobra roll to stop it from valleying again, but maybe that'll happen in the off season.

This surely needs to happen after an incident as serious as this..