Compared with baseball and apple pie, the roller coaster is the renegade symbol of the carefree American summer. It is a twisted beacon over the kaleidoscopic amusement-park landscape. It dares us to be daring. Steep drops, high speeds and improbably tight curves force screams from contorted faces and cause butterflies for those crowding to be next. For the American leisure class, there is no entertainment quite like it. The roller coaster can be a rite of passage for kids and an obsession for adults. Their continued popularity depends on a mind trick, a bit of dynamic tension — enticing us to strap into something that feels dangerous, maybe unwise, but is actually safe.
"The goal is to flirt with danger without actually experiencing it," said Brian Avery, a University of Florida lecturer who specializes in amusement-park safety. "But occasionally, people are exposed to it, and they’re either dying or are being significantly injured as a result of it."
This month, a new round of reckoning has arrived. On Oct. 12, a man was thrown from his seat, mid-ride, and died on the Goliath coaster at Six Flags Over Georgia. That prompted Six Flags, the chain of amusement parks, to shut down at least nine other coasters across the country for closer inspection. Only weeks earlier, in late September, Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, Calif., permanently closed one of its popular coasters, X2, after years of complaints about its safety. It faced a lawsuit from three riders regarding catastrophic brain injuries, and recently settled a wrongful-death suit involving a 22-year-old man who died a day after riding the coaster in 2022.
Concern over roller-coaster safety is not a new issue. It rises and falls with every technological twist of gut-bending, mind-blowing adaptations. Each generation of coaster becomes higher, faster, steeper, bendier and gnarlier. And maybe more worrisome. Have roller coasters, finally, gone too far? Have we reached the point where they can’t get more thrilling, or death-defying, because of limits in technology, safety or human physiology? Probably not, experts said. Tomorrow’s coasters will certainly have the capability of flinging around people in more extreme ways. But should they?
"I don’t know that we’ve explored the limits of, Is that good for a person?" Mr. Avery said. The only sure thing is that more coasters are on the way.
"In our industry, the coaster is still king," said Dennis Speigel, a global theme-park consultant and past president of the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions.
"When you want attendance to pop at your park or in your company, you don’t put in a carousel, you don’t put in a scrambler, you put in a roller coaster, and you name it ‘The Demon’ or ‘The Bat’ or ‘The Beast’ or whatever," he said. "And people come out in droves to ride it."
Source: New York Times Top Stories · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing