Yesterday, a man was killed on a carnival ride in Ohio. 7 more were injured and it was absolutely horrific. I want to express how truly sad these incidents are and let others know some information I grew up with about attending carnivals and fairs.
I was born in Sterling, Colorado and just outside of Sterling is the third largest manufacturer of carnival rides in the US, Wisdom’s. I grew up just across the street from a girl who’s dad is an engineer at Wisdom’s. He designed the well-known Gravitron (and it’s later successors). I’d often go to their house to spend the night and whenever there were rides that were ready to be shipped to a carnival, her dad would wake us in the middle of the night and take us to go ride them.
So being the analytical mind that I am, I often asked about other rides, how they worked and why he would or wouldn’t let us ride certain ones. That’s when he explained certain things to me.
The first is that US made rides have certain safety requirements, and every single safety mechanism has at least 2 fallback ones as well. This is especially true of any part that moves or uses hydraulics. They also put sensors to stop a ride from running if a safety feature isn’t working. So if you’ve ever been to a fair where the worker was fiddling with the controls and nothing would work, that’s the sensors stopping it.
The safety mechanisms are even more true for any compartment where people will be. For instance, if you’ve ever been in a US ride, you’ll find they will have belts, lap and/or shoulder bars/restraints, and usually sensor like those mentioned above. Meanwhile, a similar ride made overseas might only include that lap bar, but no belt or sensor.
He next explained to me that the US also requires so many hours and types of testing before a ride can be sold. These are often far stricter than those made outside the US. This testing is where manufacturers get those height requirements for rides (along with adding restrictions for things like pregnancy and back or spinal issues).
Then he told me that one of his other jobs there is to repair and do maintenance on other rides, many not made in the US. These rides he told me do not have the same standards and he told us to avoid them. If they’ve been through maintenance at a US facility, then those sensors along with other safety pieces are often added. However, carnivals often go years beyond recommended servicing until a ride has become so unsafe that someone gets hurt or killed.
He finally pointed out the easiest way to tell a safer US made ride from those that are made in foreign areas. You an tell by a glance which are the safer ones. It’s as simple as things get really: just look at the steel floor paneling and the lights on the ride. US made rides has a pattern of a single raised diamond pointed one way with a second diamond pointed perpendicular to it. This goes over and over. They look like the picture to the right.
The pattern on foreign ones usually is a set of two or more lines perpendicular to the same amount, over and over. A sample of this is below (the one pictured is the Chinese standard). However, there are other patterns too. Either way though, that steel flooring is a great indicator of how safe the initial ride is. If a ride does not have this plating (like those swings that get lifted in the air), then it is best to look up the ride by name and manufacturer if you’re concerned about safety. Personally, I taught my kids about these tricks at our first fair and we have avoided most foreign rides (with the exceptions of those like the swings I mentioned where even if it completely failed and you flew from it, at most, you’d break your legs).
My friend’s dad also noted that light bulbs on most foreign rides are slightly different from US made ones. But those lights are hard to find and expensive to replace so many carnivals replace foreign bulbs on older rides with US bulbs. He did tell me that if you see a ride with most of its lights gone or out, it’s a pretty bad sign. That’s because those bulbs last quite some time and whenever a ride is sent in for evaluation to it’s manufacturer, it is common practice here to replace any missing or dead lights. So a ride with a multitude of missing or burnt out lights means it hasn’t been checked for a long time.
Carnivals should be fun places, but years of poor foreign engineering and lack of maintenance by those who run them has caused numerous accidents every year. — And it seems to be getting worse as these rides get older and are not maintained properly. I hope this helps those of you out there looking forward to your own fairs in both this week and the upcoming ones. Stay safe and use those two simple checks to ensure the rides both you and your children get on are the safest possible. No one wants either themselves or their kids harmed because some person out there wanted to save a few extra bucks.