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July 1, 2007
Occupational Safety and Amusement Parks
Yesterday came news of a horrific tragedy involving a worker at an amusement park near New York City which highlights the limits of workplace safety laws (via CNN.com):
An amusement park worker was thrown off a gyrating ride and killed, and park officials acknowledged Saturday that a safety precaution put in place after a fatal accident on the ride in 2004 wasn't followed.
Gabriela Garin, 21, of White Plains, New York, was killed Friday night after fastening some late-arriving riders into their seats on the Mind Scrambler, the same ride where a 7-year-old girl was killed three years ago at the landmark Playland Amusement Park in Rye. The ride was immediately shut down for the rest of the summer.
It was the fourth fatality at the park in just over three years.
Garin was operating the ride, a spider-arm-style attraction that spins riders around in two-seat cars, park spokesman Peter Tartaglia said. She had changed shifts with a new ride operator but stayed to take on a few new passengers before leaving for the night, he said.
The woman told the operator she would fasten the last riders into the car, and the new operator, whose name wasn't immediately available, stepped into a booth and started the ride, Tartaglia said.
He looked up, noticed Garin still on the ride and shut it down 15 to 20 seconds after it began, Tartaglia said. But Garin, who started working at the park when she was 14, already had been thrown from it, he said.
This appears to be an instance of where even the best safety rules and precautions cannot in the end overcome human error.
PS
July 1, 2007 in Workplace Safety | Permalink
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Comments
not to be ghoulish and focus on tragedy, but why is this "an instance of where even the best safety rules and precautions cannot in the end overcome human error"? it's not even close.
you also note:
1. "park officials acknowledged Saturday that a safety precaution put in place after a fatal accident on the ride in 2004 wasn't followed."
2. "late-arriving riders" were being put into seats
3. "It was the fourth fatality at the park in just over three years."
4. "She had changed shifts with a new ride operator but stayed...."
so, an off-duty (perhaps tired) worker was improperly loading passengers (late arrivals) on equipment that was not using all appropriate protective equipment (precaution not followed) in a park that (recently) is killing over one person per year.
EVERY time a trench collapses and kills a worker (about once a week) or someone falls off a scaffolding (about three a week) the newspaper quotes the manager/owner saying "gosh durn, but you caint stop peeple from actin stoopid, canya?"
Unfortunately, workplace fatalities due to worker negligence are entirely foreseeable and certain to occur UNLESS signficant controls are in place and enforced. Administrative policies (e.g., you stop working when your shift ends, don't seat late arrivals) and engineering controls (e.g., the protective equipment that wasn't in place) that are not enforced are prime contributors to dead employees.
This sad event was NOT the rare example that workplace deaths occur no matter how much is done. It was kids in charge of heavy machinery, lax enforcement of rules, and a pressure to keep things moving.
Posted by: kent | Jul 2, 2007 5:56:51 PM
