ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´

It’s been a fairly typical summer so far at Britain’s fairgrounds. A
young girl killed in Margate. A ride operator fined £40 000 at Lewes
in East Sussex after a faulty restraint bar on a rollercoaster car hurled
a woman to her death. A small girl half-throttled by the safety belt on
a dodgem. A collapsed lung on Hayling Island. A smattering of broken arms,
legs, ankles and skulls. Should parents be worried before they take their
offspring to the thousand or so fairgrounds and theme parks open for business
this bank holiday weekend? Risk, as always, is in the eye of the beholder.

There are about 10 000 fairground rides in Britain, catering for around
500 million passengers each year. According to a study for the Health and
Safety Executive, which inspects the nation’s fairgrounds, the chance of
death or serious injury for one person taking one ride was a modest six
in a hundred million. Someone taking 100 fairground rides in a year would
run a risk of death on a ride (four chances in 10 million) somewhat greater
than being struck by lightning (eight chances in 100 million), but less
than dying of cold (six chances in a million). They would be seven times
more likely to be killed driving to the fairground than while actually there,
says the study An Assessment of Risks at Fairground Rides by the safety
and reliability directorate of the UK Atomic Energy Authority, published
in March 1990 by HMSO.

‘But that’s a very superficial view,’ according to Monica Finan, head
of the HSE’s fairground inspectors. ‘We kill far too many people on our
roads.’ In any case the HSE’s statutory job is to keep risks as low as reasonably
practicable – ALARP in the jargon. And by that measure it reckons it has
some way to go. For while the HSE has helped ensure that the average rate
of structural failures on fairground equipment rides is down to once in
a thousand years, this remains, says the report, ten times higher than the
failure rate of other structures subject to regular inspection, such as
industrial pressure vessels.

The survey also found examples of all the kinds of slapdash operation
of rides that make passengers uneasy: control boxes left mysteriously empty
while rides are in operation; attendants clambering over rides that are
in motion; rides operated faster than recommended by the manufacturer. ‘In
many cases,’ the report concluded, ‘the overall operational practices could
not be considered as constituting any kind of organised defence against
accidents.’ Survival too often depended on ‘the average human being’s ability
for self-preservation in the proximity of mechanical hazards’.

TUMMY TROUBLE

That wasn’t too comforting a thought as I hurtled at chimney height
round the Chessington World of Adventures in southwest London, aboard the
Vampire, a hanging rollercoaster with an innate tendency to hurl your half-digested
lunch into the air.

Chessington’s deputy general manager, Robin Dunham, had just demonstrated
the early-morning checks and maintenance for this, his most prestigious
ride. He described the routine, non-destructive testing for metal fatigue
on the cars and rails, and pointed out the remote sensors and cameras, the
monitor screens and computerised control consoles that must make his fairground,
built from scratch in the past five years, one of the safest in the land.

Yet fairground rides are intended to frighten the life out of you, so
reading a safety report before is not the best preparation. And, well, accidents
do happen.

The public love affair with fairgrounds took a hard jolt during Whitsuntide
in May 1972, when a packed rollercoaster train at Battersea Funfair slid
backwards down a slope, breaking through wooden stays. The runaway train
killed five children and injured at least 12 others. The funfair, shunned
by a horrified public, was shut two years later – a warning to other fairground
operators of the perils of skimping on safety. And yet, 20 years on, rollercoasters
have survived and prospered, with one of the fastest rides in the world
doing good business at Lightwater Valley in Yorkshire and a new ride with
the highest drop – more than 70 metres, higher than Nelson’s Column in London
– about to be built on Blackpool Pleasure Beach.

The public’s memory may be short but, under the eye of the HSE, most
fairgrounds have cleaned up their act. Many wooden rollercoasters have been
replaced by metal versions. More recently, computerised controls of large
rides have been backed up by independent, and usually duplicated, fail-safe
devices.

Maintenance is systematised. At Chessington, engineers carry Psion Organisers
to prompt and record their morning round of checks. All the data is then
dumped into the main computer. ‘If you wanted to know what checks were done
on a particular morning three years ago, and what we found, we could tell
you almost instantly,’ said Dunham, as his senior engineer peered at the
bearings and axles about to propel us round the Vampire.

Little is left to chance. Water samples from the children’s Bubble Works
ride are sent off twice a week to test for legionnaire’s disease. ‘Contaminants
get atomised in the fountain part of the ride, and can be breathed in,’
he says, ‘though actually it must be a lot safer than taking a shower at
³ó´Ç³¾±ð.’

SAFETY LAPSE

The image of total safety was slightly spoilt when two children of a
contractor climbed a fence and got close to the conveyor belt carrying boats
on the Dragon River ride. ‘Conveyor belts are killers,’ said HSE inspector
Elizabeth Sherman, before asking some serious questions about the height
of the fence.

Most modern rides are designed to very high specifications. The Dragon
River, a lazy outdoor trip on small boats punctuated by a couple of steep
water slides, has sensors at the top and bottom of the slides to ensure
that there is only ever one boat in the area at a time. The two sensors
are backed up by a second pair. And if a boat does not leave the slide area
within 20 seconds of arrival, the entire ride shuts down automatically.

Such features are one reason why the push for faster rides, with longer
drops, more G-forces and more screaming passengers has not resulted in a
worsening accident record on Britain’s fairgrounds. The worst year in the
past decade was 1985, when four passengers and another four fairground staff
died. That year, four fairground rides collapsed, causing deaths in two
cases. In one a bolt in a passenger car failed on a cyclone twist, throwing
out and killing a passenger. Since then, though three passengers died on
rides in 1990, structural failures have been reduced, with only one major
failure in the past three years. Even so, according to Finan, such failures
on a ride travelling at high speed ‘remain our greatest fear’.

One danger is that, in an effort to compete with the expensive fixed
rides of ever increasing sophistication at the large fairgrounds, smaller
operators, especially on travelling fairs which are losing market share,
will bend the rules. Evidence of the past three years suggests a decline
in accidents at permanent sites, but a hint of a rise at travelling fairs.
The HSE report notes that ‘competition from newer and faster rides can tempt
operators to use increasing speeds on old rides’ which, compounded by the
slow corrosion and wear and tear of ageing rides, increases the risk of
disaster.

One safety idea proposed in the report was for a speed indicator visible
to the public, perhaps with a red area marked on the dial for overspeeding.
This brings a wry smile from the experienced inspectors. ‘You can just
imagine,’ says Finan, ‘on a Saturday night, teenagers demanding their money
back if the ride doesn’t go into the red zone.’

More practically, perhaps, many inspectors see the need for mandatory
non-destructive testing of all fairground machinery over, say, five years
old. This would be a more rigorous inspection than the annual checkup currently
required, and would specifically address whether load or speed limits should
be adjusted for the machine’s declining years.

According to the HSE analysis the biggest cause of accidents is inadequate
supervision, followed by careless behaviour by members of the public and
‘unsafe systems of work’. In other words, mechanical failure is less important
than the day-to-day human failings of passengers, operators and managers
on fairgrounds. Though foolish, reckless and drunken passengers sometimes
get the blame for accidents, the HSE believes that fairground operators
have a duty to protect them, and their fellow passengers, from such folly.
Its report states ‘the majority of accidents to members of the public are
preventable by employer action’.

ROLLERCOASTER ROMEOS

Ride operators are a frequent source of complaint. After a series of
site visits, some official and some incognito, the HSE report concluded
‘some attendant behaviour is quite inconsistent with modern requirements
for employee behaviour at work’. At one fairground they noted: ‘On the Speedway
ride, attendants seemed to want to show their expertise in jumping on and
off the ride whilst in motion and traversing across the ride balancing drinks.’
Some operators of permanent fairgrounds told New ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ that they mostly
employ women operators, who spend less time flirting and showing off.

In fact, the biggest risk on most fairground rides is to the operators
themselves. Risk of death for them is ‘at the higher end of the range for
industrial activities’, says the HSE – up there with the notoriously dangerous
construction industry. And the operators of some rides, the HSE notes, are
exposed to ‘substantially higher’ risks.

The legislation surrounding fairground rides is strict but has flaws.
Aside from any visits by HSE inspectors, operators are required to have
a complete independent inspection of every ride each year. One firm of consulting
engineers, Allott and Lomax, appears to do most of them and has a high reputation.
But, astonishingly, there is no licensing system for the inspectors. ‘Oh,
yes, we’ve wanted to do this for a long time. These inspections are a weak
link,’ says Finan. ‘But we’ve never had anything to hang it on.’

One useful hook might be the case that came to court last month of a
woman thrown from a rollercoaster. The ride was new and, says Finan, the
restraint had not been checked and was not working properly. Plans to indict
the independent inspector were thwarted, she says, because the company
had gone out of business.

While modern rollercoasters and large swingboats may excite most of
the terror on fairground rides, it is the humble roundabout that causes
the most accidents: 57 out of the 156 serious incidents reported to the
HSE in the past three years, against 14 for rollercoasters and 5 for swingboats.
In most cases passengers fell from roundabouts or they or bystanders were
struck by moving parts.

On an informal trip round Chessington, the local HSE inspector Elizabeth
Sherman showed most interest in whether children could get their feet trapped
between car and platform as they got on and off than in anything else –
especially on rides where the car never actually stops and people clamber
on and off moving vehicles. The operators of Chessington’s Vampire rollercoaster
have less than 30 seconds to get several dozen passengers released from
their safety bars and out of the cars, and the next lot in, safe and on
their way.

For a million-pound ride that can take more than a thousand people an
hour, and with a 45-minute queue outside, the conflict between fast turnround
and safety is ever present. On my ride, under the eye of a manager, an operator
did not notice that she had knocked my glasses from my face as she secured
the safety bar, and I was left feeling for them as the ride began.

While the public flock in ever-increasing numbers to Britain’s big permanent
fairs, such as Chessington, Alton Towers and Blackpool Pleasure Beach, much
of the inspectors’ time is taken up with the traditional travelling fairs.
Inspections are organised by area offices of the HSE. But many fairs travel
widely across the country. ‘There is a danger,’ says Finan, ‘that travellers
could slip through the net, criss-crossing the country for years without
ever being inspected.’ She plans a new national computerised system to keep
track of inspections of fairs and individual rides, which are often independently
run.

In some respects, travelling fairs have lower safety standards. Few
have the kind of barriers to keep the public away from rides that are possible
on permanent sites. Most have no first aid post – another loophole in the
legislation, says Finan.

But what, to the layperson, might appear the worst hazard is to Finan
a safety feature. Most fairs are dismantled every week or so to be moved
to the next site. Far from fearing mistakes, Finan says, ‘in practice this
allows the operators, who are also the rides’ engineers, to spot signs of
metal fatigue, worn bearings and so on’. Permanent rides may only get stripped
down for this kind of inspection once a year.

Finan, whose beat stretches from the Mersey via Blackpool to the Scottish
borders, has a high regard for the technical skills of many travelling fairground
operators. ‘Many, perhaps most, of the men running travelling fairground
rides, cannot read or write. But mechanically and electrically, they are
very sound. They have often dismantled and erected their rides for many
years and know everything about them.’

She fears that calls made in the HSE report for a system of certification
for ride operators could undermine this expertise and discriminate against
travellers. ‘How would you measure competence?’ she wonders. ‘What would
be these men’s chances of getting a City and Guilds qualification, for instance?’

BUNGEE JUMPS

With most fairgrounds reconciled to regular visits from inspectors,
many of the worst dangers to the public now lie in various ‘rides’ and dare-devil
exploits offered away from fairgrounds, at fetes, holiday resorts and so
on. One such is the bungee jump, in which people leap from the top of a
crane and bounce back, feet from the ground, suspended by an elastic rope.
Notoriously, one bungee jumper came to grief during recording for a TV programme
a few years ago. Early this month a fairground worker in Canada plunged
to his death with a bungee rope round his waist.

‘We don’t allow bungee jumpers on fairgrounds,’ says Finan. ‘We find
that the risks from them are much higher than for other rides.’ She is worried
that, with tight restrictions in Britain, people are being encouraged to
travel to France to make sponsored jumps for charity. ‘The French put all
their weight into verifying the hardware,’ she says. ‘But that’s the easy
bit. We take the view that if it can break, one day it will. So a lot of
effort has to go into operational procedures and ensuring that everything
is duplicated.’

Recreational water ‘rides’ are another growth area. Off holi-day beaches
some jet skis, like motorised aquatic motorbikes, can hurtle on across the
water after their passengers fall off. An alarming new lake sport, says
Finan, is the cable ski. Water skiers are towed by boat and cable in a line
across water. But if someone falls off, they risk being mown down by the
skier behind. There are four cable ski rides operating in Britain.

Britain narrowly avoided an invasion of three-wheeled all-terrain vehicles
(ATVs), small motorised tricycles that have tipped up and killed hundreds
of children in the US. The British government imposed a ban at the last
moment to prevent the entry of a shipload diverted to Britain when the
US outlawed the machines. Now, says Finan, ‘people are talking of setting
up tracks with four-wheeled ATVs. We already have maximum speeds for these
vehicles, based on age, but we shall need to watch carefully.’

Another, less predictable, cause for concern is the children’s bouncy
castle. These devices have spread from fairground to school fetes and the
backs of pubs with startling speed in the past few years. Thousands have
been sold to laypeople as potential weekend moneyspinners, which owners
can hire out at weekends. ‘Legally, this is fairground equipment, and potentially
they are deadly,’ says Finan. ‘Many people who buy them don’t even have
an instruction book. Still less do they know that the rules about annual
independent inspection of fairground equipment apply to them.’

What can go wrong? One of the worst risks is that they can blow over
in a wind. ‘Not tethering bouncy castles is a big sin in our book. Kids
can be catapulted out of the castle.’ Several children were hurt in such
an accident in Wales earlier this year, says Finan.

Tethered or not, bouncy castles produce a steady stream of children
taken to hospital casualty wards with broken arms, cracked heads and twisted
ankles. A recent government survey estimated the figure at between 2500
and 3000 a year. That is an alarming contrast with the three injuries involving
bouncy castles formally listed by the HSE for last year.

What are the things to watch for before you step onto a ride this weekend?
The answer is to be your own safety inspector. Check that you can see someone
attentive in the control box. Keep away from rides where skylarking attendants
clamber on moving equipment. Watch a complete cycle of the ride before going
on. Check for safety signs. Are operators making sure they are complied
with? If not, even if you are as good as gold, others may make your trip
unsafe.

Always check harnesses and safety bars, especially the kind that rest
on your legs. Ask yourself whether a child’s body could slip beneath the
space needed for your chubby thighs. Make sure handbags, newspapers, glasses
and the contents of pockets are secure from G-forces. Don’t drag reluctant
children aboard. Oh, and drive carefully on the way home.

Further reading An Assessment of Risks at Fairground Rides by the Safety
and Reliability Directorate of the UK Atomic Energy Authority for the Health
and Safety Executive. Published by HMSO (March 1990). £5.