ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- A teenager Saturday was struck and killed by a roller coaster at the Six Flags Over Georgia theme park outside Atlanta, authorities said.
The Batman ride at Six Flags over Georgia reaches speeds of up to 50 mph.

The 17-year-old park visitor was killed after scaling two fences -- one of which was six feet tall -- around the Batman roller coaster, park spokeswoman Hela Sheth said in a statement. The teen, who visiting the park with a church group from Springfield, South Carolina, was decapitated, she said. It was unclear how fast the outside-looping coaster was moving when it struck the teen, but according to the park's Web site, the ride reaches speeds of 50 mph. "We do not know why this person was intent on gaining access to this restricted area," the statement said, noting that multiple signs are posted stating, "Danger Zone," "Do Not Enter" and "Authorized Personnel Only."

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full article here

Mind you, I'm not making fun of the death of this boy by any means, but does anyone else see the tremendous irony in this statement? He literally lost his head trying to retrieve a hat.

P.S. - I hesitated in even making this post due to the potential flaming, but meh...

LOL I thought it was funny. If people don't like it, flame on. Thats what he gets for ignoring the MANY warning signs and the fact that he was walking under a ROLLER COASTER.

honestly why would you risk your life for a hat?

And they'll blame Six Flags. It is sad though. I wouldn't have gone that far to get my hat. I'd just try to find an employee or something. Six Flags is getting a lot of it, it seems. I wonder if going to Frontier City would be worth it. (Eh, I'll prolly go regardless. After all, the Superman ride incident didn't stop me from riding Dr. Dean's Rocket Machine at Magic Springs & Crystal Falls.) this is sad to read, though.

Sorry to say stupidity should truly hurt.



I went on a roller-coaster at Worlds of Fun, in Kansas City, in the early nineties. I wore shorts with very shallow pockets. As we went upside-down, I knew my keys had fallen out. I approached the ride operaters, they told me I couldn't retrieve my keys, that I'd have to wait until the park closed, and the keys were available at the park's lost and found. I truly understood, and cursed my own stupidity (not the park's).

I waited until the proper time. I approached the young girl (high-school girl, probably), and mentioned I'd lost my car-keys. She cracked her gum, rolled her eyes, and said "Can you identify your keys?"

I said, "Yes, they're the one with the .45acp (inert) cartridge attached to the key-ring."

She said, "Oh, that one!"

She immediately handed me my keys. I still have that (inert) .45acp cartridge on my key-chain!

i don't live but about a hr. from six-flags over georgia. my g/f and i take our kids there regularly. i'm nor saying anyone deserves to die, but you would have to put forth a great deal of effort to get to where he did.

you can post all the signs to want too but people seem to think this doesn't mean them. Sorry this young man lost his life but maybe he should have taken the signs seriously. The lawyers are going to have a ball with this 1

Yes, it is a shame about this boy's death, but the fact is, he was 17 years old and should have known better. These signs are posted for a very important reason, and when ignored the consequences are horrible...

I live fairly close to Six Flags and have ridden this ride numerous times. I cannot for the life of me fathom what this young man was thinking. Besides the loss of his life his family will always be left with the wonder of why he would do such a stupid thing. Of course they will sue but if I were the judge I would throw it out. He did after all climb 2 fences and ignored posted signs.

maybe it was a really special hat??

still what a twit.. darwin award contender here..

sorry for those ppll who were in the ride at the time it happened

I feel sorry for the ones who witnessed it.


and the guy's family of course-

This was a weird incident.. xD The Guy was literally killed by the Hat..

I feel for the victims family, but he ignored warning signs and climbed over two fences, natural selection at work...

BTW, I don't feel six flags should be held responsible for this youth’s ignorance...

Omg if i was on the ride id faint, maybe have a heart attack! feel bad for 'em and the parents.

His own fault. Wonder what part of the coaster hit him... Imagine if another rider had hit him.

The replies are so cold its f* ing chilly in here..
Its just a freak accident, Ill admit its not that smart of this individual to risk his life for a hat but hey,
ive seen US presidents do far worse.

My condolances to the boys family.

I guess they'll have to put up signs that say "Warning, You will DIE if you go any further".

Do you think he still would have kept going if there was a sign that said that? I mean, I feel bad for him dying and everything. . .but its sort of common sense to stay AWAY from rides that are in operation. . .I don't think anyone is being "cold" by saying that. . .I mean. . .its the truth. It doesn't mean people are being disrespectful by saying it. If he was with a group, they should have kept a better eye on him.

wow that's so sad

It is, of course, a tragic occurrance.

But it is unfornuately, somewhat typical, and illustrative of the modern mindset.
Almost assuredly, someone will be discussing Six-Flag's liability for this incident, and almost assuredly, some one will take this before a court in litigation pertaining to responsibility.


The responsibility lies with the "victim" of his own idiocy.
It is a tragedy, for his family, and certainly for any patron who may have witnessed this horror occur. They all have my sympathies.


However, as a judge in the civil case that is sure to follow.... (the family of (insert name of person who violated clear warning signs about possible hazards and decided to get his head cut off while doing what he was clearly told not to do)) v. Six Flags, Inc....I'd be inclined to express my condolences to the family, apologize for not being able to do anything about their situation, and not chastise them for bringing forth a meritless case against some entity with no liability in the matter.

I might also take the lawyer who brough them into my court aside and pistol whip him!

I fully agree MID. Although it is without a doubt his very own fault, I think the respectable thing to do is not
ridiculing the somewhat not so smart move, but simply show respect and leave it at that.
And yes, seeing as US culture is to sue (hope thats the way its spelled) anyone and everything remotely involved this will be the case in this situation also.

Salus populi suprema lex

Again, I fully agree. My statement was directed at the people playing this story as a joke, getting a good laugh outta the whole thing. I think thats pretty cold. You on the other hand, are in no means disrespectful with the quote I put in.

No one meant it to be a joke!! I young man lost his head over a damn hat. He refused to obey the warning signs. That is the mindset of people to. That sign does pertain to me. I am special. Now his is dead. A terrible lost for his family.
Six Flags will be sued because someone refused to follow the rules.

Must have been one hell of a bad hair day.

Its not Six Flags' fault, the boy ignored saftey signs to get a hat, and lost his head. Its very tragic, but this wouldve been avoided if he would have just followed the rules.

True.. perhaps they could place his head on a spike, as a effective deterrent to others...
It just all so tragic.

Here's a clip of the actual ride.. witness said it picked him up and threw him into a wall.. ouch!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpLpIZyZoGg

I am willing to bet that the young person never actually read the sign in the first place.
If you've ever had any experience working in general industry, you may have noted that signs, no matter how bold or clear, are often not obeyed.

So many times I have had to question someone who received stitches in his head as to why they weren't wearing a hard hat.
The answer?

"I didn't know I had to!"

This despite the fact that it was covered in his safety training course prior to assuming his duities, and despite the fact that a 4' x 3' poster hangs on the door accessing the area he was working in which said, "CAUTION: HARD HAT AREA. YOU ARE REQUIRED TO WEAR A HARD HAT IN THIS AREA!"

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution the boy was there to try and grab somebody's feet that was on the ride. Feet that were going 50 miles an hour...

Had he actually tried to do that, not only would he have lost his head but whoever's legs he tried to grab would have broken and possibly detached!

If you're going to do something stupid, be prepared to pay the price.

Well...

It doesn't seem likely that the kid could've actually grabbed and held onto a pair of feet whizzing by at 73 feet per second. I suspect if he actually tried and made contact, the velocity wouldn't have allowed him to do anything but slap them before the feet were gone. He couldn't have gotten much of a grip. Somebody might have felt the contact, maybe gotten bruised, but there's little likelyhood of a significant injury in the grabbees case. The kid himself probably would've been stung in the hands pretty good. Of course, a man was killed some years ago while being struck by the leg of a passenger, with no significant injury to the leg which struck him.


Maybe he was trying to do something dumb like that, but I think that idea was an original claim which was later denied. Still, it seems clear that the mass of the ride struck him in the head or neck (it takes an awful lot of force for a blunt object to remove a head)... so maybe he was trying to reach up and grab someone's feet, or maybe he went in and tried to get a hat that was laying under where the ride passes its lowest and the ride happened to do so at just the most inopportune moment.

One would think you'd hear and or see it coming...but whatever.

I don't suppose it matters much, the results were the results. It's a terrible thing to hear about, certainly.

And of course it's human nature to seek a reason, to seek repsonsibility for such a senseless thing. The family most certainly is asking why...and is seeking some responsibility for this from someone.

Unfortunately, there is nothing apparent here which affixes responsibility to anyone save the person who paid the ultimate price for his indiscretion. The responsible party is dead. The case is essentially cut and dried legally. Emotionally, I'm sure it's not, but seeking legal recourse where there is none is probably as tragic as the event itself.

It is an amusement park, of course, so I expect a drawn out legal battle with no satisfaction coming at the end of it. Amusement parks have been responsible for several tragic deaths in the past...that young person whose feet were severed by a cable due to a faulty ride a while back, etc...in this case, I can see nothing pointing to Six Flags' responsibility.


It's simple in this case. Young person enters restricted area, with ample warnings posted. Young person ignores warning and enters anyway. Young person is killed instantly by the danger he ignored. Case closed.

_________________________________________________________________________

There's another point to make regarding these "amusement" places.

There's a risk inherent in all of these crazy rides. Ever read the disclaimers on the tickets to places like this? As a pilot who's done some fairly "exciting" things in an airplane, I can tell you I wouldn't be caught dead or alive in a ride where I had no control over it and my life depended on the structural soundness of a support or a cable that was going to lift me 200 feet into the air and drop me like a bungy cord and let me swing around like a maniac to and fro...while I had absolutely no control over the thing whatsoever. My life is completely out of my control on something like Acrophobia or that Dare Devil Drop thing....


Paying up to $25.00 for a minute of thrills like that is a risk I wouldn't take (I'd be perfectly willing to climb to 40,000 feet and attempt to break the sound barrier in a controlled dive, or to fly aerobatic maneuvers where I was going to pull 6 Gs, but not to subject myself to an uncontrolled amusement park ride...wierd, huh?).

Anyone remember the Water World accident maybe ten to twelve years ago where perhaps 25 high school students plummeted to serious injury or death on a water slide...when it gave way under their weight?

...this too was a nonsensical thing involving the ignoring of warning signs...water slides are designed generally to accept the mass of a person with a safety margin (up to 10 people's weight, actually). 30 kids went down at the same time...the thing gave way. Some were ahead of the fault, and continued down to the end of the slide... but about 20 or more, fell 40 or 50 feet, while their classmates, and observers on the ground watched helplessly.


Personally, I think any of these places poses an inherent risk, whether from the rides themselves, or the stupidity of those who participate in, or do other things (like this kid) in unsafe manner.

Well I don't think he would have been able to hold onto their feet either. I suppose I was assuming that the ride, and therefore the passenger's feet, would have been dangling low enough to the ground for them to catch at least his upper torso. But the more I think of that, the stupider it sounds. LOL. No engineer in their right mind would set a roller coaster that low, so I suppose he would have to reach up, probably above his head, to reach the person. But even with that, you would think that even an impact between two small objects going 73 feet per second would cause some kind of damage to at least one party.

I think it would...and it had in the past.

But the impact of a piece of metal...Lord knows what piece...at such a velocity, comncentrating the entire energy of the moving compartments into a small space...and impacting a human neck...well, that's a quick escape for life on earth, if you ask me...

Dumb to be there...


And I don't think engineers design necessarily for lunacy, or untoward human behavior...they tend to design for safety of the occupants, and structural integrity of the device itself.

That was my point. I realized it would be stupid for an engineer to put a coaster that low, for the sake of the passengers.

Remember I said the rides are not designed to compensate for human stupidity. The ride is designed at several points to go low in order to increase the sensation of speed. There's inherently no more hazard to the passengers along any point on the track. No one gets close to touching the ground on the ride...but it certainly comes close enough to the ground to clip someone who might, for some insane reason, be standing there...

The design included double fencing and warning signs to keep people out of the area beneath the coaster.

Used to have a sort of unwritten rule about designing vis-a-vis foolproofing:

Foolproofing is almost pointless, because no matter how many ways to be a fool you can think of, and design for, there's always a fool who is smarter than you!

[quote name='MID' date='Jul 14 2008, 08:28 PM' post='23936

Used to have a sort of unwritten rule about designing vis-a-vis foolproofing:

Foolproofing is almost pointless, because no matter how many ways to be a fool you can think of, and design for, there's always a fool who is smarter than you!
[/quote]

Being in the business my husband and I are in, I can tell you vehemently that is true!

It seems more than a theory, doesn't it? Virtually a matter of scientific law!

LOL thats good, and so true!