Amusement Park Safety -- What You Need to Know

Fifteen people were injured on Aug. 11, 2010 in an amusement park accident when a train ride at a Colorado amusement park derailed. The operator of the ride at Tiny Town park was found to have been driving the train as much as five times the normal speed limit when it went off the tracks. (He told authorities he meant to hit the brakes but accelerated instead.) It was the most recent amusement park accident to capture national headlines and to illustrate how good times can go wrong at parks in the U.S. and around the world.

Amusement park rides generally have a good safety record, but sometimes the unexpected happens.

Though amusement park safety requires vigilance on the part of the parks and reasonable care on the part of visitors, nearly 300 million people do safely enjoy 1.7 billion rides each year at the roughly 400 fixed-site theme parks in the U.S., according to Colleen Mangone, spokesperson for the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions.

The International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, or IAAPA, is the largest international trade association for permanently situated amusement facilities worldwide, with members from 90 countries -- among them, most of the fixed-site amusement parks and attractions in the United States.

According to the organization, your chances of being seriously injured (read: requiring overnight hospitalization, or worse) in an amusement park accident in one of the U.S. permanently located parks is a mere one in 9 million. Pretty good odds, to be sure.

But accidents do occur -- whether due to equipment failure, an unforeseen health issue that causes problems for the rider or a lapse in protocol on the part of an operator, such as in the case of Tiny Town. And when something goes wrong, a magic day at the theme park can take a tragic turn.

All across the nation, you'll find fixed-site theme parks -- think Six Flags and Walt Disney World -- as well as smaller, moving carnivals and fairs (the IAAPA does not represent these mobile attractions).

According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission -- a federal agency with jurisdiction over rides at mobile theme parks and attractions -- there were approximately 3,000 amusement park accidents reported on mobile park rides in the U.S. in 2009.

Records from the National Safety Council , which tracks injuries at fixed parks, show roughly half that number. There were an estimated 1,523 injury reports from incidents in 2008, the last year for which data has been made public -- that equates to approximately 4.7 injuries for every one million attendees.

And while traveling amusement parks are subject to government regulation by the CPSC, permanent or "fixed" parks are dealt with on a state-to-state basis, often with entities like the department of labor or department of commerce in charge of inspections to ensure safety.

"State regulations vary but nearly all require incident reporting, inspection by the state or a state approved inspector, and insurance," says Mangone, "In addition to state regulations, insurers also inspect rides and require that certain specifications be met."

According to Six Flags spokesperson Sandra Daniels, "All rides and attractions (at Six Flags park) undergo an annual state inspection. Additionally, our engineering and maintenance staff inspect all rides and attractions on a daily basis.

"We spend more than 3,000 hours per day on safety checks and follow the guidelines as set forth by the ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) Committee F24," wrote Daniels in an e-mail to AOL Travel.

The ASTM -- comprised of more than 400 park operators, manufacturers, government inspectors/regulators, and consumer advocates -- establishes standards on design and manufacture, operation, testing and more, and undergoes frequent review to keep up with changes in technology.

But whether at fixed-site theme parks or here-today-gone-tomorrow fun fairs, some of the grisliest amusement park accidents on record were the result of rider error -- among those, the 2006 incident at Six Flags Over Georgia, in which a teenager was decapitated when he entered a restricted area under the Batman roller coaster to retrieve his hat and was beheaded by the ride in the process.

Other times, pre-existing health conditions, such as heart abnormalities, can make riders more susceptible to health problems that are exacerbated by the intensity of a ride. (If you have any doubt about whether you're in good enough health to go flying down a roller coaster track, it's best to consult with a doctor ahead of time.)

And, of course, there are plenty of occasions where the theme parks made grave oversights, as was the case in 2003 when investigators found Disney responsible for the death of a rider on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disneyland in California -- the ride's wheel assembly malfunctioned, sending a locomotive into a nosedive and a passenger to his death.