Idea for a restraint safety system

[Changa]

So, as a result of the seemingly increase in accidents involving restraints not being properly lowered to secure guests, I had an idea at random of an alternate way to sense a restraint's position & wanted to see what y'all thought regarding it's feasibility!

Using Mack restraints as an example: Each seat has a total of four non-contact proximity sensors (likely infrared due to their low cost and maintenance) mounted to both the harness and seat around the thigh area. These would measure the distance between the seat and harness from the riders' thighs, therefore determining how relatively secure they are. Eg: A rider would be stapled if the combined proximity readings of each leg is zero; if there is a gap in the harness, but it is within a threshold distance, rider's are secured while still allowing for airtime; If riders push their legs up to try and keep the lap bar high, the seat-side sensors would exceed the total distance and flag the issue. This would therefore be more representative of the rider's safety than just the closing angle of the harness.



These could all be linked to a control unit on the underside of each car to interpret the respective signals from each switch. Power and data can be transferred through track-side contacts (either through bus-bars or B&M style contacts), then fed back to the operator to highlight any seat errors. In case there are any functional issues with the sensors, the operator can override a false seat error to dispatch a car if the attendants can verify the safety of the affected rider.

The main setback that I found was that rider thighs are deformable, which would skew the relative distances between the sensors and let them get away with lifting their legs to keep the lap-bar up, but could also be accounted for with other means.

What are your thoughts? Please let me know as brianstorming stuff like this is always good fun.

 

[Dan?]

It seems like the maximum sensor reach there is too small to accommodate vacant seats, and the gap in that case could still be too much to be considered safe. Seems pretty sketch having to override seats every however often if your park's quiet or doesn't have/use single rider lines.

 

[Changa]

It seems like the maximum sensor reach there is too small to accommodate vacant seats, and the gap in that case could still be too much to be considered safe. Seems pretty sketch having to override seats every however often if your park's quiet or doesn't have/use single rider lines.

I reckon that, if the sensor reach is not large enough to measure from the closed harness to the seat, using it in tandem with the usual closing angle of the harness could be used to automatically determine if a seat is empty or not (if both pairs of sensors are maxed out while the harness angle is low enough to feasibly be within a sensing range, it'd be safe to mark it empty).

The overriding seats would definitely be an operational liability in a busier park. If empty seats can be automatically accounted for without creating false flags to the operator, it would reduce the alarm fatigue that comes with the system. Then legitimate issues can be checked by the attendants and either fixed and automatically cleared, or verified as non-issues with the riders and the operator can mark them as resolved, therefore allowing the system to dispatch the train? This wouldn't resolve the liability but could mitigate it to a point where it is beneficial as a whole?

 

[Dar]

It depends if you just want to know if there is something in the way of the sensor at all, or if you want to know if there is something within Xmm of the restraint.

Because proximity sensors that just say "yep, there's something where I'm pointing" are fairly cheap, not discounting that you'd need four extra sensors per seat.
However, sensors that can say "there is something Xmm from me" (and are designed for industrial use) are fairly bulky, very expensive, and they can generally only sense distances 5cm and over.

It's a cool idea but I think it's solving a problem that doesn't really exist. It's much cheaper and efficient to train your staff properly and have management that care that things are done right and will back their workers if they say someone can't ride.