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Coaster at Portaventura kills employee

Ollie

CF Legend
How can the coaster run off by itself when he's doing checks around the track? It is a shame, but I hope they don't close the ride for ages like they did with Hydro.
It doesn't really give you enough information to find out how it happened or what happened exactly.
 

Emmett

Giga Poster
Its shows Stampida but it could be either Diablo or Tomahawk from the Far West too.

Seems slow for the story to come out seeing as it happened on Monday in one of Europes biggest parks.
 

spicy

Giga Poster
That's Tomahawk shown in the picture with Stampida in the background.

Terrible though, obviously proper procedures weren't followed if the train was allowed to go round the track while the employee was maintaining the track which happens on almost a daily basis on a wooden coaster.
 

Inverse

Hyper Poster
Thank god... i'm due to be there next week, don't want a coaster down.

This whole thing doesn't make sense. How can a train be dispatched with a man on the track? Even with that error, how did the man not hear the train coming? There is a walk way down the side of the track that if you moved to the edge of, you wouldn't get hit. It's not exactly fast either, the CoasterForce page on it says 30mph.

toma.jpg


It's an almost impossible series of errors to occur.
 

furie

SBOPD
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
He may have thought it was Stampida testing? So didn't react simply because he wasn't expecting it.

I suspect that he didn't tell anyone he was doing maintenance, or was doing something he shouldn't (maybe he'd seen a bolt on the track which needed tightening) which he needed to confirm to the station that he was on the tracks and not to dispatch a train.

I'll bet he thought "two second job, I'll have it sorted before anyone notices". Then he got caught out unfortunately.

30 MPH may not seem fast, but when you only have a few yards warning of something coming at you travelling at that speed - you're stuffed.
 

Rush

Giga Poster
That's a shame seeing as the Think advert said there's an 80% chance of living when getting hit at 30mph.

The sad thing is that it could have easily been avoided and I hope this is a lesson for the park for better communication between the station ops and engineers if that was the fault in this incident.
 

nadroJ

CF Legend
This makes me really sad for some reason, more sad than the child dying in the UK recently. Weird.
 

Ben

CF Legend
Rush said:
That's a shame seeing as the Think advert said there's an 80% chance of living when getting hit at 30mph.

Um... cars =/= coasters last time I checked...


You're almost 100% likely to survive if you get hit at 30mph... by a pillow.
 

nealbie

CF Legend
^ lol!

But Tom, ambiguity aside, 20% is still a relatively large figure when considering how many times cars hit people!
 
That's pretty sad though, like, it's definitely a freak accident and I guess just an unfortunate unfolding of circumstances. He should have been more careful though, for sure.

Another sad death in the coaster industry.. Not good.
 

Hixee

Flojector
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Social Media Team
Rush said:
That's a shame seeing as the Think advert said there's an 80% chance of living when getting hit at 30mph.
Cars are designed to take the impact of a person. Coaster trains are not. Simple.

This is quite shocking really, but I think furie has probably got the gist of what happened. I guess it was just a stupid mistake with a terrible outcome.
 

divvie_dave

Mega Poster
Also, cars tend to brake before/during and after they hit you...... sometimes.... most of the time

You would just get dragged along by the coaster i guess. Must have been pretty grusome.
 

Hixee

Flojector
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Social Media Team
^It would probably used his head to slow down.

Lush.
 

Blaze

Hyper Poster
Rush said:
That's a shame seeing as the Think advert said there's an 80% chance of living when getting hit at 30mph.

Where is the add for swerving? :wink:

Seriously though, this is bad news, I don;t know how it happened, but it should not have done. It sounds like a tragic mistake and human error that caused it, nothing more serious, no need to close it.
 
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