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The full indictment [1] is well worth reading. The most relevant sections for HN, in my opinion: > 35. [Designer Jeffrey] HENRY compared the construction of Ve

The full indictment [1] is well worth reading. The most relevant sections for HN, in my opinion: > 35. [Designer Jeffrey] HENRY compared the construction of Verrückt to an arms race against rival waterparks. > 37. HENRY admitted that he was ignoring established industry safety standards because he felt he could redefine those standards with his own achievements. While describing his vision of how Verrückt would change the industry, HENRY explained, "[W]e're going to set the standards up, and set the education up, and we're gonna redefine many of the definables that have been defined in the industry that we couldn't find good reasons for." Also check out paragraphs 85-89 for some incredibly unethical behavior on the part of one of Schlitterbahn's attorneys. [1]: https://www.wycocourtks.org/uploads/4/4/1/2/4412070/2018-03-21_indictment__miles_swkc__filed_redacted.pdf https://www.wycocourtks.org/uploads/4/4/1/2/4412070/2018-03-...

Analemma_ 9y ago
Move fast and break things!
- nielsbot 9y ago
  "things"
- HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
  This is why most of us aren't real engineers. When real engineers are sloppy people die. When we are sloppy, our industry leaders defend it as being 'pragmatic'.
  - crazypyro 9y ago
    Its almost like completely different problems have completely different design constraints... There are plenty of "real" engineers who design stuff that have very little safety implications, such as optimizing electrical boards or minimizing costs in manufacturing.
    - theresistor 9y ago
      Poor choice of example. "Electrical boards", aka PCBs, have a lot of safety requirements, and poorly designed ones are often implicated in electrical and battery fires.
      - crazypyro 9y ago
        Fair enough, I had trouble coming up with concrete examples. I do think there are plenty of engineering situations where safety isn't a major concern though.
  - hashbig 9y ago
    It's Agile!
ericjang 9y ago
+1, definitely well worth reading. Paragraphs 85-89 seem like they come out of a prize-winning thriller, but every single paragraph in the indictment is also gripping.
duskwuff 9y ago
Holy shit. This is some Action Park [1] level irresponsibility here. A few other horrifying details: * Riders were restrained by Velcro straps. These frequently came loose. One rider broke several toes after his restraint came undone during a ride, forcing him to dig his feet into the corners of the raft. * The brake system on the ride was completely nonfunctional when the boy was killed, and had been that way for several weeks. Evidence suggests that the park planned to delay maintenance until the park closed for the season. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_Park -- aka "Class Action Park"
- chiefgeek 9y ago
  aka "Traction Park". Went there a couple times in the 80's. That place rocked, but it was, uh, a little unsafe.
- justherefortart 9y ago
  My dad rode a cliffhanger type of slide at Action Park in the mid 80s. It had a plastic covering about 1/2 way down so you couldn't "fall off" the slide. I'm still amazed to this day he did it because he's afraid of heights. It was easily 50' high. Fortunately, the only downside was it was like getting an enormous enema. Those sled things that went down the concrete track, everyone has scars from those. Great memories but not remotely safe. Great Adventure (Six Flags) wasn't as much fun but we all came back in one piece.
  - murph-almighty 9y ago
    My dad recalls one summer where three people died on coasters and another incident where someone lit a (very unsafe as per fire code) haunted house on fire. It's gotten considerably better since then though when I stopped going they were in the middle of a serious nickel-and-diming phase.
  - ams6110 9y ago
    Fond memories of childhood visits to a local "flume" ride, essentially a long concrete-lined ditch dug in a switchback pattern down a big hillside. Painted to make it slick, and they pumped a continuous stream of water all along it. You rode it by sitting or lying on foam mats, about 3x4 feet in size. A ton of fun, you could get going pretty fast and you definitely wanted to have your legs crossed when you hit the pool at the bottom. Never heard of anyone getting hurt though, other than some mild abrasions if you slipped off the mat -- the concrete wasn't totally smooth. The curves were pretty steeply banked and the most you could really do if you went over the side was end up in underbrush. Terrible that adults who should know better are making rides without apparent regard for safety of the (mostly) kids that will be riding them. Those elevated trough rides do worry me, they really need to be fully enclosed anywhere there is any chance of going airborne or over the edge.
djsumdog 9y ago
Society has moved into a dangerous position of rewarding people for extreme risk taking, so long as it pans out. I'm not saying this guy wasn't responsible. He totally was, but things like this are going to keep happening the more we encourage disastrous risks. They use to happen all the time before we started focusing on safety standards for cars. There's a great 99% Invisible episode about the shift from believing injury from car accidents was unavoidable/the fault of the driver to making cars safer in impacts: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/nut-behind-wheel/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/nut-behind-wheel/ Stories like this seem to be a step backwards. Regulation can sometimes hinder some industry (usually when one industry lobbies for it to keep competitors), but it also has an incredible track record of making things safer.
- hashbig 9y ago
  The solution is not stop encouraging people to take extreme risks, it's to stop encouraging them to take risk that put others, and not them, at risk (and punish them if they do so). All of the great services and products we use today came from extreme risk taking, it's the corner stone of entrepreneurship.
  - zipwitch 9y ago
    I read that as meaning risks like "if my product isn't caught killing anyone in the next year, I'll be a billionaire!" type risks, not personal risks.
- taneq 9y ago
  > Society has moved into a dangerous position [...] > They use to happen all the time before we started focusing on safety standards [...] Maybe it's seen a bit of a resurgence recently, but history (and the attendant selection bias) has always rewarded risk-takers whose risks paid off, while letting the rest die off-screen.
- jonhendry18 9y ago
  At the most basic level you have the people doing risky stunts for YouTube, etc, and getting killed. Like the woman who shot her boyfriend in the chest with a Desert Eagle, at his insistence, because he thought an encyclopedia volume would protect him.
crazypyro 9y ago
edit: The owner was arrested just today, so I had missed that. Can someone explain why they are charging the 29 year old director of operations who started as a lifeguard and had no formal training or connection to engineering/design and not one of the designers or owners, both of which are mentioned in the indictment multiple times? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me other than they needed to charge someone.
- empath75 9y ago
  The father of the kid that died is a state legislator and he got a huge settlement.
  - crazypyro 9y ago
    Right. They settled for ~20 million shortly after it happened. The Kansas attorney general also took over the investigation. Still not understanding why the criminal indictment isn't for the designer or owner who are mentioned several times...
    - shock-value 9y ago
      One of them seems to have also been arrested: http://www.kansascity.com/news/article206886324.html http://www.kansascity.com/news/article206886324.html
      - crazypyro 9y ago
        Thanks, I missed that this came out today. This is what I was expecting.
- Maybestring 9y ago
  >Evidence suggests that the park planned to delay maintenance until the park closed for the season. When a safety feature was out of service, they decided to keep running it. That sounds like a director of operations decison. And much easier case to prove than design deficiency.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
the8472 9y ago
> that have been defined in the industry that we couldn't find good reasons for. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton%27s_fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton%27...
- MandieD 9y ago
  How on earth have I missed that encapsulation of a conservatism that is a good balance for liberalism (or progessivism)? When you can explain what that rule might have been good for, you can seriously discuss changing it.
  - jonhendry18 9y ago
    That's what kills me about GOP deregulation. It's purely profit driven, without concern for actual effects. I'm okay with improving regulations. But that take time and effort and isn't amenable to the reckless clearcutting approach.
PhasmaFelis 9y ago
> we're gonna redefine many of the definables that have been defined in the industry What?
mcguire 9y ago
Whoa. That's disbarment-worthy.
comex 9y ago
Another particularly egregious bit: > 61. In response to the Groves incident, MILES intercepted the incident reports which the lifeguards had written. MILES destroyed these written witness statements. MILES then forced the lifeguards to write coached statements which omitted any detail of how the injury had occurred. MILES then ordered the medical staff to alter their medical reports.
kazinator 9y ago
Sounds eerily like some Silicon Valley startup founder.

Analemma_ 9y ago

Move fast and break things!

nielsbot 9y ago
"things"
HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
This is why most of us aren't real engineers. When real engineers are sloppy people die. When we are sloppy, our industry leaders defend it as being 'pragmatic'.
- crazypyro 9y ago
  Its almost like completely different problems have completely different design constraints... There are plenty of "real" engineers who design stuff that have very little safety implications, such as optimizing electrical boards or minimizing costs in manufacturing.
  - theresistor 9y ago
    Poor choice of example. "Electrical boards", aka PCBs, have a lot of safety requirements, and poorly designed ones are often implicated in electrical and battery fires.
    - crazypyro 9y ago
      Fair enough, I had trouble coming up with concrete examples. I do think there are plenty of engineering situations where safety isn't a major concern though.
- hashbig 9y ago
  It's Agile!

ericjang 9y ago

+1, definitely well worth reading. Paragraphs 85-89 seem like they come out of a prize-winning thriller, but every single paragraph in the indictment is also gripping.

duskwuff 9y ago

Holy shit. This is some Action Park [1] level irresponsibility here. A few other horrifying details: * Riders were restrained by Velcro straps. These frequently came loose. One rider broke several toes after his restraint came undone during a ride, forcing him to dig his feet into the corners of the raft. * The brake system on the ride was completely nonfunctional when the boy was killed, and had been that way for several weeks. Evidence suggests that the park planned to delay maintenance until the park closed for the season. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_Park -- aka "Class Action Park"

chiefgeek 9y ago
aka "Traction Park". Went there a couple times in the 80's. That place rocked, but it was, uh, a little unsafe.
justherefortart 9y ago
My dad rode a cliffhanger type of slide at Action Park in the mid 80s. It had a plastic covering about 1/2 way down so you couldn't "fall off" the slide. I'm still amazed to this day he did it because he's afraid of heights. It was easily 50' high. Fortunately, the only downside was it was like getting an enormous enema. Those sled things that went down the concrete track, everyone has scars from those. Great memories but not remotely safe. Great Adventure (Six Flags) wasn't as much fun but we all came back in one piece.
- murph-almighty 9y ago
  My dad recalls one summer where three people died on coasters and another incident where someone lit a (very unsafe as per fire code) haunted house on fire. It's gotten considerably better since then though when I stopped going they were in the middle of a serious nickel-and-diming phase.
- ams6110 9y ago
  Fond memories of childhood visits to a local "flume" ride, essentially a long concrete-lined ditch dug in a switchback pattern down a big hillside. Painted to make it slick, and they pumped a continuous stream of water all along it. You rode it by sitting or lying on foam mats, about 3x4 feet in size. A ton of fun, you could get going pretty fast and you definitely wanted to have your legs crossed when you hit the pool at the bottom. Never heard of anyone getting hurt though, other than some mild abrasions if you slipped off the mat -- the concrete wasn't totally smooth. The curves were pretty steeply banked and the most you could really do if you went over the side was end up in underbrush. Terrible that adults who should know better are making rides without apparent regard for safety of the (mostly) kids that will be riding them. Those elevated trough rides do worry me, they really need to be fully enclosed anywhere there is any chance of going airborne or over the edge.

djsumdog 9y ago

Society has moved into a dangerous position of rewarding people for extreme risk taking, so long as it pans out. I'm not saying this guy wasn't responsible. He totally was, but things like this are going to keep happening the more we encourage disastrous risks. They use to happen all the time before we started focusing on safety standards for cars. There's a great 99% Invisible episode about the shift from believing injury from car accidents was unavoidable/the fault of the driver to making cars safer in impacts: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/nut-behind-wheel/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/nut-behind-wheel/ Stories like this seem to be a step backwards. Regulation can sometimes hinder some industry (usually when one industry lobbies for it to keep competitors), but it also has an incredible track record of making things safer.

hashbig 9y ago
The solution is not stop encouraging people to take extreme risks, it's to stop encouraging them to take risk that put others, and not them, at risk (and punish them if they do so). All of the great services and products we use today came from extreme risk taking, it's the corner stone of entrepreneurship.
- zipwitch 9y ago
  I read that as meaning risks like "if my product isn't caught killing anyone in the next year, I'll be a billionaire!" type risks, not personal risks.
taneq 9y ago
> Society has moved into a dangerous position [...] > They use to happen all the time before we started focusing on safety standards [...] Maybe it's seen a bit of a resurgence recently, but history (and the attendant selection bias) has always rewarded risk-takers whose risks paid off, while letting the rest die off-screen.
jonhendry18 9y ago
At the most basic level you have the people doing risky stunts for YouTube, etc, and getting killed. Like the woman who shot her boyfriend in the chest with a Desert Eagle, at his insistence, because he thought an encyclopedia volume would protect him.

crazypyro 9y ago

edit: The owner was arrested just today, so I had missed that. Can someone explain why they are charging the 29 year old director of operations who started as a lifeguard and had no formal training or connection to engineering/design and not one of the designers or owners, both of which are mentioned in the indictment multiple times? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me other than they needed to charge someone.

empath75 9y ago
The father of the kid that died is a state legislator and he got a huge settlement.
- crazypyro 9y ago
  Right. They settled for ~20 million shortly after it happened. The Kansas attorney general also took over the investigation. Still not understanding why the criminal indictment isn't for the designer or owner who are mentioned several times...
  - shock-value 9y ago
    One of them seems to have also been arrested: http://www.kansascity.com/news/article206886324.html http://www.kansascity.com/news/article206886324.html
    - crazypyro 9y ago
      Thanks, I missed that this came out today. This is what I was expecting.
Maybestring 9y ago
>Evidence suggests that the park planned to delay maintenance until the park closed for the season. When a safety feature was out of service, they decided to keep running it. That sounds like a director of operations decison. And much easier case to prove than design deficiency.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

the8472 9y ago

> that have been defined in the industry that we couldn't find good reasons for. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton%27s_fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton%27...

MandieD 9y ago
How on earth have I missed that encapsulation of a conservatism that is a good balance for liberalism (or progessivism)? When you can explain what that rule might have been good for, you can seriously discuss changing it.
- jonhendry18 9y ago
  That's what kills me about GOP deregulation. It's purely profit driven, without concern for actual effects. I'm okay with improving regulations. But that take time and effort and isn't amenable to the reckless clearcutting approach.

PhasmaFelis 9y ago

> we're gonna redefine many of the definables that have been defined in the industry What?

mcguire 9y ago

Whoa. That's disbarment-worthy.

comex 9y ago

Another particularly egregious bit: > 61. In response to the Groves incident, MILES intercepted the incident reports which the lifeguards had written. MILES destroyed these written witness statements. MILES then forced the lifeguards to write coached statements which omitted any detail of how the injury had occurred. MILES then ordered the medical staff to alter their medical reports.

kazinator 9y ago

Sounds eerily like some Silicon Valley startup founder.