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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."
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.
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
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
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.
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!!
a few points first. i am a pretty hardcore rollercoaster enthusiast. the law passed in NJ limits coasters to 5.6 G's. well, i know of none in the world that exceed 5.0 G's. so first of all, the law's completely pointless. it's like banning the sticking forks in your eyes. nobody does it anyway.
second, what few injuries rolloercoaster riders have sustained have NOT come from G forces at all. the ones that weren't the result of a malfunction or user error have come from banging their head into the restraints. this has to do with how well the ride is designed, not the G forces it inflicts. a ride could pull only 1 or two G's but still bloody your ears if it's designed poorly.
third, this is simply setting a bad precedent. first come the G force regulations, then height and speed regulations follow. at this particular point in time, rollercoasters are taking quantum leaps forward technologically. the advent of complex high-speed 3d software and the hardware to run it, along with the current theme park boom, are allowing coasters to go higher and faster than they ever have before, and do so while providing a smoother, safer ride than has ever been experienced. have you ridden a B&M coaster, or one of S&S's thrust air monsters? any legislation concerning height and speed, for example, would quickly become laughably obsolete. 100 feet was once a monster of a hill (in the 80's!). now there are coasters more than 400 feet tall.
roller coasters ARE safe. G-forces are NOT dangerous on any roller coasters operating today.
i could live a little longer in this prison
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
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.