The chief executive of Six Flags says the company will install seat belts on the Georgia roller coaster from which a rider fell to his death earlier this month. The company’s rides with similar restraints will also get the safety upgrade.
The theme park operator announced the extra safeguard less than two weeks after 42-year-old Hassan Jihad Ibn Kariem of Atlanta died after being ejected from his seat on the Goliath coaster at Six Flags Over Georgia.
Yeah I see what you’re getting at, and a seat belt would probably have saved this man.
To point back to the ASTM standard for a second though, most seatbelts in use on rollercoasters are not allowed to be counted as part of the restraint system for enhancing it’s class rating to 5 via redundancy because they can be opened by the rider (6.4.3.9 (4)). The vast majority of intense rides that use them are typically using them as external verification of sufficient restraint position instead of or in addition to the proximity switch.
From an industrial safety perspective the seatbelt feels like more of an administrative control to me than an engineered* control because of the rider ability to bypass. Which an administrative control can prevent accidents, but an engineered control is definitely preferable where feasible.
*For anyone following along, the seatbelts are definitely engineered to handle the loads, just in my opinion industrial safety wouldn’t put them in an engineered control category because of aforementioned reasons