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New Jersey Officially Limits G-Forces on Coasters
Well, NJ has (sadly) become the first state in the US at limiting G-Forces on roller coasters. The regulation calls for prohibition of forces greater than 5.6 that last longer than one second. NJ gave itself the right to regulate rides after an accident where two were killed from a malfunction, not excessive Gs. (A ride I rode once -- It's a kiddie-sized coaster, not what you'll find at Cedar Point, OH. The two killed were a seven year old and her mother.) This is also despite the lack of scientific evidence linking G forces to brain injury, and 320 million riders who turn out just fine every year. One brain-injury specialist interviewed said that you can exert 10 Gs just plopping into a chair, saying the state was "a little misguided."
Former Astronaut, "Buzz" Aldrin seems to have suffered no ill effects or brain injury from high Gs from his flights and space shots.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Plopping into a chair produces a very short pulse at 10G. That duration is key here. Most people will pass out in prolonged exposure to 10G.
Most "injuries" related to non-bruising/bone breaking G-forces are from blood deprevation. A really long, tight turn may be enough to deprive your brain of enough blood flow to cause you (or someone with poor circulation to start out with) to pass out. After passing out, you'll just flop around on the ride, where real injury can occur.
As for direct effects, we of course have the very unscientific number of "healthy patrons" which gives us some comfort with the current state. However, it isn't insane to believe that large exposure to prolonged, high-G roller coasters could pose real health hazards. Imagine if someone built a 10G sled that accelerated you linearly, then radially for say 30 seconds. Most of the people on the ride would have a hard time walking after, and many may have passed out.
Setting reasonable standards isn't a bad thing. If someone wants to build one faster or whatever, they could always file a variance with the locality if they could prove it was safe. This just puts their rides up to (more) public scrutiny.
I'm not sure about the statistics you quote, but I agree. Whats with the /. crowd assuming that all rollercoaster riders are like them (ie 20-40 yo males w/ too much testosterone)? There have been several cases of death induced by (and possibly caused by) rollercoaster use.
Limits are needed and the industry brought it on themselves by (1) Making rollercoasters really fast and (2) Not addressing the issue of deaths.
If the rollercoaster manufacturers/theme parks had really addressed this issue to begin with, this might not have been as big a problem.
-Sean
Well, it depends a LOT on the nature of the force. Plopping into a chair is a force that the body is pretty well equipped to handle. Car accidents (suddent deceleration) can toss about very heavy G loads - 25 G's isn't unusual. A lot of auto safety now is figuring out how to mitigate those forces (airbags soften the forces relative to the dashboard) and how to redirect them into a more survivable form (why small children ride backward - we can take more G's from our back than our front)
5-6 Gs in the manner that rollercoasters deliver are pretty high (forces that an unsupported head will need to resist against). Sustained for even a few seconds and some people will pass out, and most people will be sore, and few will suffer significant problems due to pre-existing conditions. A CART race was postponed last year when drivers complained of dizziness and difficulty breathing with G forces around 5, though it was for fairly sustained periods.
I think the problem boils down to more people riding coasters, more high G coasters, and more people that aren't in sufficient shape to handle such forces. The number of injuries and deaths aren't high, but for an activity that is supposed to be entertainment, I suspect our tolerance for casualties is pretty low.
From the article:
G-force is the pressure put on the body when it is suddenly accelerated from a motionless position, resulting in a person's body being pushed back into their seat.
What the author just described here is half nonsense and half the wrong thing. Acceleration from any "position", motionless or not results in a force being applied to bodies going along for a ride. Secondly, the suddenness, or rate of change of acceleration, is jerk, not acceleration. G-forces are acceleration, not jerk.
That said, I personally think the regulation of the g-forces isn't really going to help much. Whenever I ride a rollercoaster, the sudden acceleration making my head knock into the supports is definitely the least fun part to me, and my guess is that's what causes the alleged brain injury, not sustained g-forces.
How about known risk. I know when I go onto a roller coaster that despite all the past history, anything going that fast could in some way cause me injury. If you avoid everything just because of a possible risk, then life would really suck. Better to make the public aware than impose somewhat random or uninformed limitations.
If you know people who have died in auto accidents, does that mean you shouldn't drive?
Cars can cause accidents, TV can cause seizures. How many people were the 42 out of? If it's 42/100000000 that's lower than most things. I'd almost guarantee that there are a number of things you do every day that risk your life more than jumping in a roller coaster (despite the feeling that you're going to die every time).
Life is full of personal risks. We should be informed of the risks, and make our our decisions. Thus is the only way that we can lead a life of freedom - phorm
Do I think it's "American" to lecally prohibit someone from hurling themselves down a steel railing at Ludicrous Speed?
No, not particularly.
But at present, do I feel it's the sort of "right" which our efforts can be BEST spent protecting?
No. Let's worry about Joe-Bob's "Constitutional Right To Scary Carnival Rides" in a couple of months. For the moment, let's see whether we can allow a bunch of medical students to drive cross-country without closing down interstate highways and expelling them from school (all in 48 hours) on the word of some half-witted busybody.
crib
Please don't read my journal
The prevailing attitude from the 30 odd replies I've read so far, is something like this: They are sil;ly and stupid bureaucrats who are limiting our enjoyment in something totally harmeless.
My reply to this is, a 5.6 G turn will produce the same sensation as a 4.6 G turn. So the fun is still exactly the same. Besides, for those who have a hard time thinking beyond their own noses, G forces apply to machinery as well as to humans. Lower Gs results in less stress on the machinery, and thus becomes less likely to malfunction. Also, designing for less Gs reduces the cost of construction, which, theoretically, means more roller-coasters.
Learn just a tiny little bit about law before you go spouting your mouth off. They are banning high G force rides, which sounds like they are making it an offence (ie criminal law, public prosecutors). As it stands now, the rememdy is a civil one, (ie negligence law, ambulance chasers.) You don't need statutes to sue, tort law will do just fine, thankyou very much.
Chances are this law will result in less death and injury, which is a loss for the legal eagles.
The McDonalds coffee example is the most badly chosen one I can think of. There were literally dozens of people who got badly burnt by McDonalds coffee before the old lady got her genitalia burnt off. McDonalds calculated that it was cheaper to settle these cases individually than to reduce the temperature of the coffee to a safe level (hot coffee is supposed to keep longer). Any corporation that calculates their profits on a liability vs personal injury (or death) basis deserves to get hit HARD. Any jury that see evidence like that will. McDonalds got what they deserved, simple.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
I might care if you can show me a link to that statistic. A quick Google search turned up a whole lot of nothing, except a Book Review of someone saying that sudden acceleration syndrome was B.S. in the Audi case and it was bad science. If your statistic is legit, then yes, I would care. But it looks like FUD, which is probably why you posted AC.
Are you from Jersey?
I'm from Jersey.
Really? What exit?
--
Damn the Emperor!
This is also despite the lack of scientific evidence linking G forces to brain injury...
Wait a minute, are you telling me that all those people out there that continue to pay $40/day for park admission, $4/slice of pizza, $3/drink, and then are willing to spend 2-3 hours waiting in line for a 40 second ride... have not suffered some kind of brain damage?
No current roller coaster in the state of New Jersey comes close to a prolonged force of 5.6+ Gs. Or in any other state, either.
The law also puts some limits on lateral motion, which is not mentioned in the article. Again, nothing that would impact any currently existing coasters.
The trend in roller coasters is taller, faster, steeper, and tighter - which is good but only to a point. Sitting in the front of Nitro (at Six Flags Great Adventure in NJ) will always black out my vision in the large corkscrew. I haven't yet found a person who didn't feel extremely light-headed after taking that turn in a front seat. And that turn still isn't close to 5.6 Gs.
As for the lateral motion restriction, I applaud that. I know people who have bruised the sides of their heads on their harnesses. (The suspended Batman ride is pretty bad in that regard.) If rides keep progressing towards the extreme, some poor guy with weak neck muscles is gonna lose consciousness or even have his skull cracked. Safety limits are a good thing.
Anyway, this whole "its my body let me abuse it" uprising is pointless. The limits set by this law do not affect your ability to black out or sprain your neck. However, they just might save your life in 5 years when someone tries to build a coaster thats bigger and badder than it ought to be.
I rode the said roller coaster many times, though certainly not recently. The last time I rode it must have been 1993 or so, and that ride remains one of the most horrific and memorable events in my memory.
While going up the incline, I heard several faint but audible metal pinging sounds; these were the sounds of metal ejecting from the machine. Once the roller coaster reached the peak I discovered something awful: the back right corner was not secure! During the whole ride the back bucked and jittered unnaturally, and I honestly thought the thing would come off. Afterward, I told everyone I could about my experience, though no one wants to listen to a hyperactive thirteen year old.
Though I love to be right, having a mother and her child die to prove it wasn't what I had in mind...though I did say for years the thing would kill people.
G-Forces my ass; that roller coaster is the same generic thing you see at every carnival. The owners of the park, the Gillian family, have been pocketing inspectors for years. The entire place reeks of disrepair and I refuse to set foot in it. I'm STILL waiting for the litigation against their greedy asses to surface, but they still drive all over town with their fancy cars and personalized parking places.
You say that like its some sort of bad thing. Its a freaking free service what's to complain about? The gas costs just as much many other places and you have to pump it yourself.
Why would you want to pump your own gas? Trust me when its either 95F or 25F you sure as hell don't want to be standing outside. Plus the attendant comes to you and you don't have to wait in line with people buying cigarettes. As someone who has lived in both California and New Jersey, I'll take someone waiting on me any day over having to get out of my car. I don't see your logic.
Regarding the driving age I've always thought 16 was too young anyway. Having an extra year of maturity never hurt anyone. And yes I when I was 16 I was jealous of kids in other states who had their licenses, but whatever I got over it.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Yup, I've seen a reproduction of the balance sheet from ford, numbers of deaths, injuries etc, all tallied up against potential liability, and then the bottom line calculation of cost of modifications needed to alleviate the problem. Truely shocking.
McDonalds made no such calculationsOK, I don't have any access to the evidence brought at that trial, so I shall defer to your greater knowledge. It remains, true, does it not, that the apparently excessive exemplary damages awarded in that case, were the result of McDonalds' failure to change their practices despite repeated injuries of a similar nature (presumably they felt that colder coffee would adversly affect sales). While this is not as shocking as the behaviour of Ford, it is not entirely dissimilar.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
One brain-injury specialist interviewed said that you can exert 10 Gs just plopping into a chair, saying the state was "a little misguided"
Woah Woah... into a chair? Thats crazy!! i've got the most comfy overstuffed lounge chair and I can tell ya the "specialist" has it all wrong.. its getting out of the chair!!! that exerts gforce!! i probably push against 100g's to get out of oh so comfy chair!!
You neglect to mention that they "joked" about commiting an act of mass destruction.
And you apparently neglected to read any of the news articles on this subject in the last three or four days.
The students claim that the "bring it down" remark referred to a car that they were considering "bringing down" to florida from a northern state. They claim that either the waitress was mistaken or lied about the "september 13" comment she said she overheard. They claim that the conversation was completely normal and did not touch on terrorism, september 11, or september 13. There is absolutely no reason to believe they were joking about anything.
I think the waitress just misheard stuff. However, I do not blame the waitress either. I think she did the correct thing, given the circumstances. I do not blame the police, either, though it seems they overreacted a bit. They were just doing their jobs, in investigating and clearing a possible threat.
I blame the media outlets for gross negligence. How they have handled this has been really, really stupid.
I am perplexed and disappointed at the number of media outlets who printed or said outright that the medical students admitted to "joking" about september 11. It appears, at the moment, that that particular rumor is baseless, and APPEARS to originate (I am not 100% sure about this bit) from early reports stating that the waitress' daughter told reporters that "maybe [the students] were making a joke", which were then accidentally rereported by other news outlets as saying flat-out the students had joked about september 11. You will notice that no news outlets in the latter half of the weekend have said anything at all about "joking".
An extra note, becuase an AC asked for elaboration on cribcage's "being expelled" comment: The students have been asked, at least temporary, to leave their internships at the hospital they are studying at because the hospital had been recieving threats from people who didn't quite grasp everything the news told them (Can't find link at this moment, sorry, but there was an article on CNN.com this morning which now seems to be gone.) The hospital said they would consider allowing the students back in time, or if local law enforcement would agree to assist in providing extra protection from "patriotic" nutjobs.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Pardon me for asking, but isn't that a bit unhygienic?
(I can't even begin to consider the agony of requiring 10Gs!)
Simon
Can you show me evidence, that meets the criterion of the doctrine of strong inference, that a 5.6G maximum is consistent with safety for roller coasters? I can sure as hell provide hundreds of thousands (probably tens of millions) of examples of poeple that have rode on any given coaster and suffered no ill effects.
5.6G is pretty high I think.
:^)
I once went for a joy flight in a twin seater (side by side) ex Military Jet Provost (I think they were training jets). We were not using any anti-G suits and the pilot asked if I'd done any acrobatics before. I had in a prop plane, so I said yes.
We had done some groovy acrobatics including a loop which had required me to push blood back to my head to prevent passing out when he put us into another loop... I was having great fun!...
I can only think that it was a tighter loop (higher G's) than the first because I saw grey sooner than expected and the next thing I remember was...
hmm, I can't move my arms.... why can't I move my arms... and my legs they are shaking like crazy, how embarassing. Surely the pilot will be noticing, control yourself man!
Then as I came to, I could see (and feel) that the pilot had a hold of my (crossed) hands preventing me from stiking him in the head as my body spasmed in the seat.
The pilot said we had been doing just below 5 G's.
So... I don't think many people would want many G's sustained over more than a second (not in a virtical loop anyway).
I still enjoyed the flight though
Okay, as a coaster enthusiast, here is my take on this.
1. They are regulating something that has a lower per capita injury/fatality rate than garden hoses, bowling, driving, walking up stairs, and really just about anything.
2. Given [1] this is obviously 'look good' legislation that, as usual, totally fails to see the cause of injuries.
3. By far the biggest cause of injuries is rider error. You know, people who don't "remain seated with your hands inside the car at all times". The next biggest cause (roughly 15%) is operator error. These type of accidents usually result because the operator did something stupid (IE was walking under the track while the coaster was running.) The other major cause of accidents (almost 5%) are caused by those with preexisting conditions (asthma, heart trouble, back trouble, etc). Again, essentially rider error, as the signs warn quite clearly that those with preexisting medical conditions should not ride.
4. Even assuming g forces are a danger (I disagree, but just for the sake of argument...), NJ is looking at it in the wrong way. Based on a large body of anecdotal evidence (I've ridden 153 coasters at 52 diffirent parks, total # of rides probably close to 5000), the only thing that ever causes discomfort are those hideous over the sholder restraints (Sometimes referred to as 'horsecollars'. These restraints let your HEAD do all the stopping under any sort of lateral acceleration. Ever since Karl Bacon of Arrow Dynamics came up with the idea in the early '70's, they have been causing headaches everywhere they are installed. Luckily, some companies are seeing the light. Schwarzkopf GMBH (one of the dominant builders of early looping rides) always used simple lapbars, and those ride like a dream. Premier Rides, maker of magnetically launched rides, has recently retrofitted almost all their rides with lapbars. Those have now gone from a boxing simulator to being world class rides.
TODO: Something witty here...
Otherwise known as the Philip Morris argument.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
You need to study roller coaster design a little more. Many roller coasters are designed to look and feel like they are going to fall apart at any moment. I've ridden those that are, and those that are not. I avoid the roller coasters that feel soild becuase they are no fun. (In general the soild roller coasters ahve to mkae up for the lack of fun by going upside down, while the "weak" ones are fun with much tamer rides)
Engineers are tricky, those roller coasters are still plenty safe, and inspectors are not often bought. For that matter the operators know that they need to appear to be running a minimal maintance operation, but if that actucally running minimal maintance is risking death, and they cannot afford those lawsuits. (Okay, so the insurance company might force it in some cases, but the result is the same: a raide that feels unsafe while still perfectly safe)
Momentary and transient G-loads are something that have been fairly well documented. However, the "plopping in the chair" theory still doesn't exactly hold water in this case.
If you get a transient 10-g load by plopping into your chair, what do you suppose you incurr when you get banged around in the coaster?
I don't think you get brain damage; but I also think that you should be able to build an exciting coaster without having excessive g-loads. Sustained loads of 4-5 g's can be very exciting.
They are in airplanes.
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!