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Schlitterbahn’s Tragic Slide
- justizin 8y agoStruggling to read this as the original Schlitterbahn in New Braunfels was pretty much the happiest place on earth to me as a kiddo.
- burlesona 8y agoUgh, yes. Had the same reaction.
- wyldfire 8y agoI love capitalism and the idea behind laissez faire. I still think it might be the least bad thing out there but I keep coming back to stuff like this where people just don't act in their own long-term (or even short-term sometimes) interest. Caleb's gone, many people who lived in Grenfell Tower are gone, and now I think many markets where safety is critical deserve some good regulation. > He never got a conventional education beyond high school and never formally studied physics or engineering. That alone isn't a bad thing. Maybe he's a visionary for these water rides. Provided you retain real engineers and take their advice, that is... > an engineering firm ... issued a report suggesting ... there was a chance the raft would go airborne on the second hill. The ride opened anyway, with the weight range unchanged. !!! > But one of his lawyers acknowledged that Jeff didn’t have such training. He added, “Neither did Henry Ford, and he built the car.” This is actually a mildly compelling argument. Thousands died in cars for decades [1] before cars competed on safety features and real safety regulations arrived. However, today, I think and hope that other water parks and amusement ride designers do conventionally use simulation and other methods to arrive at safe designs. It's not unreasonably expensive considering the total expenditure of the ride's design and construction. States like Kansas should come up with some terribly simple low bars like requiring professionally licensed engineers to sign off on a ride's design and maintenance procedures as safe, and requiring annual inspections of ride service and incident records. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
- cmiles74 8y agoIs it really possible that no licensed engineers were involved with the project, and that none of them signed off on anything significant? Based on the article, it sounds like at least one licensed engineer noticed that rafts were leaving the track.
- tqkxzugoaupvwqr 8y agoEngineers were involved as consultants but their assessment was cast aside. > What’s more, according to court documents, the investigators learned that on July 3, 2014, one week before the ride’s grand opening, an engineering firm hired by Jeff and Schooley to perform accelerometer tests on Verrückt’s rafts had issued a report suggesting that if the combined weight of the three passengers in a raft was between 400 and 550 pounds—the weight Jeff and Schooley had agreed was appropriate—there was a chance the raft would go airborne on the second hill. The ride opened anyway, with the weight range unchanged. In the end, no expert vouched for the ride’a safety. > Kansas City reporters began digging. They quickly learned that their state, like Texas, allows water parks to be self-inspected. (Under the headline “The making of Schlitterbahn’s Verrückt water slide: Too much, too fast?” a Kansas City Star article concluded that “the ultimate safety of [Verrückt] mostly began and ended with those inspired to build it.”)
- toast0 8y agoGiven that Kansas apparently allows water parks to self-assess the safety of their rides, and that the owner of the park doesn't care about safety, but has a construction background, it's not a surprise to me that no engineers were involved in the design. It's not a good idea to build public buildings without the input of a structrural engineer, but it's not impossible.
- GavinMcG 8y agoThis isn't a personal accusation, but had you never heard of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, or read The Jungle, or Silent Spring? I'm asking because these are things I encountered in high school, and in a community that very much "love[s] capitalism and the idea behind laissez faire." I'd like to hope that everyone's education would be enough to instill an understanding of these things. The alternative is a Grenfell Tower for every generation.
- techsupporter 8y agoMaybe as a way to help compartmentalism from what the article is describing, I keep wondering: why do “long form” stories all seem to follow the same script? - Introduction to the subject - Introduction to the “characters” - “Dramatic thing began to happen, with seemingly innocuous steps taken towards the unforeseen conclusion, but then, as the thing begins to unfo—“ - “Back in 1823, when the ancestor of the grandfather of the person who first set these steps tangentially in motion was born, baby rattles were just becoming popular...” [119 paragraphs giving a detailed biography of the main person] - “And now, the conclusion...”
- HillaryBriss 8y agoexactly! you have nailed this annoying format to the floor with a nuclear-powered hammer and half a billion titanium nails. unfortunately it always rises again...
- sqrt17 8y agoThe answer, maybe the one you're looking for is that the schema you describe is suitable for blowing up into longform stories that could be equally well-suited to be treated in 400 words or less. The question would be, do we care for longform as a format (as opposed to having bite-sized stories with links between them if they're part of something bigger)? Or do we care about stories that have substantial background that needs to be explained (rather than be a tangential addition to a main story)?
- navbaker 8y agoIt’s the same formula that recent documentary makers use to stretch out a relatively simple true crime story that happens to have a weird twist into ten one hour episodes.
- oeuviz 8y agoIt is not only suitable to blow it up but also to shorten it in any way you want. You just omit literaly any paragraph and the reader is still able to grasp the story. Also, using this format the story can be extended anytime without restructuring the text. But yeah, I agree it is not enjoyable to read.
- cmiles74 8y agoI was surprised to discover the article didn't mention any engineers that had worked on the design or implementation being sued for damages. Nor did the article mention any engineers who refused to construct or otherwise work on the tallest and most dangerous waterslide in the world. Perhaps engineers in other fields are not so different from software engineers after all, published code of conduct aside.
- jey 8y agoDoesn't sound like they had any engineers. The article mentions only one engineering consultation just before it opened which warned that "a raft with three passengers weighing between 400 and 550 pounds could go airborne" and which was dismissed by the company.
- cmiles74 8y agoI believe that same company also noted that the rafts were leaving the track. That aside, while it's clear the person from the park that led the project was not any kind of engineer, I find it very unlikely that the slide was designed and built without the involvement of any licensed engineers. Everytime an article related to the Volkswagen emissions scandal is mentioned, a finger is always pointed towards the software developers and it's hinted that they broke the law and should be responsible in some way. I am surprised a similar note isn't struck in this article with regards to the engineers that worked on this project. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-vw-software-ethics-perspec-1006-20151005-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-vw-...
- jey 8y agoThe article claims that Jeff Henry designed it entirely through trial-and-error methods without the involvement of any engineers. That sounds preposterous to me too, but it seems to be true.
- StillBored 8y ago
- Animats 8y agoThey killed a politician's 10 year old child with a badly designed water slide. If it hadn't been a elected official, they'd probably still be operating.
- sethev 8y agoI doubt that. I live in Kansas City and the public shock was pretty much immediate - even before it was reported who it was. There's no way that ride was staying open. Also, the park is still operating just not that ride.
- nodesocket 8y agoThe parks are still running, just not that ride. As another user has posted, public outcry was universal. Don't be so cynical.
- wyldfire 8y agoThe fact that it was not just a fatality but a remarkably gruesome one virtually guaranteed that no one would ever ride that ride again.
- duxup 8y agoI'm not sure I buy into it being a politician's child was the trigger. The whole situation is pretty horrifying.
- esaym 8y agoMy grandma lives not far from Schlitterbahn in New Braunfels. I remember one incident, probably back in 1990 when I was 5 or so, I was at my grandma's house and some cousins came down to go to Schlitterbahn. They went without me (was perfectly fine enjoying myself on my grandma's 20 acre property) and they all came back later that night. But the next morning my one cousin, probably 12-14, stayed in the back room and never came out. Everyone kept bringing her food and water through out the day but she never came out. I finally asked what was wrong to which my (somewhat crude mouthed) grandma only stated that she hurt herself on a ride and now her vagina is all swelled up and so she can't walk. Being 5yo I really wasn't sure what the heck that meant. Actually, I'm still not sure. But the best I can conjecture was she rode this one really tall water slide where you sit on a plastic sled and I assume the sled came out from under her and when she hit the "water brake", it flew in between her legs. But I don't know, and I'm not going to ask...
- MrBuddyCasino 8y agoThere is a steep slide in a german water park that women aren’t allowed to ride. The reason is that if ridden with legs spread, water can forcefully enter the vagina and cause injuries. So that’s a real possibility.
- watwut 8y agoWouldn't that hurt men even more? If they spread legs there are privates and men tend to be sensitive when those are hit.
- linohh 8y agoWhen I was a kid, we went to TX (I'm from Germany) and everyone recommended going to New Braunfels because it's so German. We were quite shocked to see how german it was. It seemed like a hideout for traditional german values (as in conquering Poland) - no pleasant memory.
- wyldfire 8y agoWow, what in particular do you mean?
- HillaryBriss 8y agomy guess is that New Braunfels, Texas is planning to invade Warsaw, Indiana in the second half of 1939.
- matt4077 8y agoThe name alone sounds like a made-up name from an uninspired nazi comedy. Haven’t been there, but it’s probably a bit like Namibia, which had the unfortunate experience of briefly being entangled in German dreams of colonization: they have radio stations continuously playing German folk music from the 1920’s. It’s not explicitly fascist music (as far as I can tell) but the association was strong with everyone who heard it.
- esaym 8y agoUp until about 50 years ago, the population was mostly German, and German was still being spoken. Not so much now though.
- bagacrap 8y agoSomewhat alarming that the net and hoops which are presumably there as a safety mechanism to prevent leaving the track completely ended up causing fatal injury.
- userbinator 8y agoIndeed, they probably caught his head and then quite naturally, ripped it off. It seems almost common sense to use something smoother and softer, but as the saying goes, "common sense isn't common". You can see them in this video of the ride (start at 1:00) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZsK7zSCJ2w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZsK7zSCJ2w
- jrmg 8y agoThanks for posting the video. Watching it, I realized that the image of the ride I’d built in my head when reading the article (three people lightly strapped to a flimsy inflatable float) was pretty far from reality (which looked more like a rollercoaster that happened to sit on water). I can see why people thought this was safe.
- svrtknst 8y agoAccording to the article, the metal hoop seems to have caught him in the neck. I can't imagine being there in the raft, nor being there as a bystander, watching.
- StillBored 8y agoHaving just taken the kids to the new braunfels location.. Oddly, master blaster continues to have the same net and hoop layout. I wondered about it years ago when I first rode that ride. https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=master+blaster+schlitterbahn&view=detail&mid=808F2FB1F90E4B13E63F808F2FB1F90E4B13E63F&FORM=VIRE https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=master+blaster+schlitte... While I didn't ride it this time (the wait is generally really long), I think I was more aware of the fact that there are a lot of dangerous areas in the park. A couple years ago when my kids were younger, I saw first hand how just a bit of running on wet concrete can result in some serious road rash. The park is very responsive to these kinds of injuries, but they must be very common. This time I came away with the idea that these parks are built around 70's era don't protect the kids from the daily bumps bruises of life mindset. If there were actual regulation, I suspect there would be a _LOT_ of changes forced on by the safty crazies. For starters, many of the rides should probably require helmets. I myself cracked my head (twice) against concrete tube chutes after having fliped off tubes in fairly minor drops (just a few feet). Maintenance isn't really top notch either, years ago I remember sitting at a picnic table on a windy day and a fairly large limb broke off a nearby tree and missed a woman and her baby by inches. This probably won't keep me from going again next year. The place is a blast, and if you do manage to injure yourself, there is literally a hospital across the street. It does make me more respectful of the attractions though, something I don't think most people going there really understand. Water + speed + hard objects will result it some injuries. Hopefully like many other activities (riding a bike/skate board, jumping off cliffs, climbing trees, etc) the user learns where their limits are and if they exceed them, the injuries aren't life threatening.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- lisper 8y ago"Instead of using fundamental mathematical and physics calculations to design and build the ride, the two men had “rushed forward relying almost entirely on crude trial-and-error methods.” And although they realized that their finished product “guaranteed that rafts would occasionally go airborne in a manner that could severely injure or kill the occupants,” they went ahead and opened the ride anyway." Yep. All you have to do is look at the thing and apply some basic mechanical principles (like conservation of energy) to know that you're rolling the dice. Just a little less friction to dissipate energy on the way to the top of the second hill and -- whee! -- you're airborne.
- tqkxzugoaupvwqr 8y agoThe worst are the nets and semicircular loops to which the nets are attached [1]. To me it is obvious that if you go airborne on the second hill (that has these nets, too), you will drag the net with you – it might as well not even exist. All that remains to keep you inside is the metal loops. Well, you are now flying through a cheese grater. [1] https://www.texasmonthly.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/HR_SCHLITTERBAHN9_0818.jpg https://www.texasmonthly.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/HR_S...
- duxup 8y agoWord of warning... the descriptions in this article are pretty horrifying.
- soapboxrocket 8y agoCaleb was my nephews best friend, and the families did a lot together. My brother-in-law said that he talked to the father after and he said the hardest part was that they all got in the car to go home after and had an empty seat.
- wyldfire 8y agoWhat did the family do with the settlement money? If my son had died I would feel so terribly conflicted. Survivor's guilt would be so much worse if I got to live a life of luxury in exchange for my son.
- AdamM12 8y agoYou do realize you could like not spend the money lavish manner right?
- wyldfire 8y agoIndeed I do! 20 million dollars is a lot of money and I would feel tempted to spend it on things to make my family's life easier/better. Yet then again if it served as a reminder of my son's death, I might be persuaded to instead donate it to a scholarship or charity in my son's name. Thus my question. Since I don't know how I'd handle it, I'm curious how this family did.
- AdamM12 8y agoDid they actually get that much? I can understand now why you said that given that amount of money. Although really even $1 could make someone question it's use.
- tjr225 8y agoI used to work in an office at Cerner where you could see this slide from my floor - really sad when it happened.
- brian-armstrong 8y agoThis article seems to romanticize the ride's creators. Why? They built a ride that injured and killed from their own intentional neglect. The men should be regarded as murderers.
- phrz 8y agoFrom Texas. I feel that the article is trying to describe a Texan perspective of this disaster, reconciling the reality of the criminal negligence and death with the very heavy nostalgia and romance most Texans have for the New Braunfels park, pretty much synonymous with childhood for many of us.
- rdiddly 8y agoAnd they're being charged as murderers. I wouldn't say they're being romanticized, per se, but reality is seldom black-and-white enough to paint someone one-dimensionally as a monster and still be telling the truth. Seldom does a baby come out the womb and people go, "What a monster, he is going to kill someone someday."
- JAdamMoore 8y agoFck this stupid sht. Isn't this supposed to be news for Hackers and not this other stupid sh*t? Come on, you pathetic children. Get it together!
- kevinSuttle 8y agoWhy the fuck was this on "Hacker News", let alone at the #2 spot?
- falsedan 8y agoinsert throwaway comment about the lack of ethics education in STEM goes here
- kevinSuttle 8y agoIs this supposed to mean something?
- falsedan 8y agofurther throwaway comment about lack of reading comprehension and basic empathy education in STEM goes here
- AdamM12 8y agoFrom KC. The indictment [1][2] is pretty bad. There were multiple reported injuries that were decently severe leading up to the final incident. One of the guys full blown destroyed reports. Which led some 17 yo kid to become a whistle blower and go to detectives. I'll agree this article attempts to paint this guys a slightly more favorable light and should of went more in depth into the actual misconduct of some of the persons involved. KC Star did some really good reporting on this whole incident even leading up to it I believe they were calling into question the safety. [1] https://www.kansascity.com/latest-news/article206611679.ece/BINARY/Read%20the%20full%20Schlitterbahn%20corporation%20indictment#storylink=readmore_inline https://www.kansascity.com/latest-news/article206611679.ece/... [2] https://twitter.com/mattdpearce/status/977310924804579329 https://twitter.com/mattdpearce/status/977310924804579329
- patrickg_zill 8y agoFrom an engineering viewpoint, one thing that jumps out to me at least, is that "100,000 people including many kids" had already ridden when this sad accident happened. In terms of real-world testing, not even 100,000 tests (or maybe ~33,300 if each raft had 3 people on it) exposed the problem.
- teraflop 8y agoThat's giving them way too much benefit of the doubt. The problem had been exposed by tests before the fatal incident. A number of passengers were injured by airborne rafts over the course of two years -- and these injuries were reported and documented by lifeguards. The problem was known even before the ride opened, thanks to independent test results from an outside engineering company. Schlitterbahn ignored and/or attempted to cover up all of these reports, as is documented in the indictment.
- rossdavidh 8y agoI think this article makes too much of the fact that they were not engineers (I say this as a person with two engineering degrees), and too little of the fact that this was by far not the first indication of problems. I can't find the HN link now, but the official government report was pretty damning. There were numerous incidents that lead to injuries, numerous reports that rafts had gone airborne when they shouldn't have, numerous times when employees expressed reservations or misgivings about this ride. It doesn't take an engineering degree, or any degree, to respond to what you see happening. This accident didn't come out of nowhere, and they had many previous indications that there was a problem.
- steamer25 8y agoYeah I could imagine an article coming from the opposite direction, deriding ivory tower calculations in favor of real world experimentalism in some case where the developers didn't do enough physical testing. There are definitely plenty of cases where design mistakes have been unaddressed to tragic consequences: poor modeling in the Hyatt Regency collapse (https://youtu.be/VnvGwFegbC8 https://youtu.be/VnvGwFegbC8), underspecified gusset plates causing the Minneapolis bridge collapse and possibly the novel methods chosen for the recently collapsed Florida pedestrian bridge, etc. Ultimately, the methodology is probably less important than whether the business chose to recklessly defraud people about the risks and safety concerns or acted in good faith.
- Gibbon1 8y agoI believe one of the reason we have professional engineering licenses which require years of working under a PE is because an engineering degree is simply not enough to weed out the loons and incompetents. I worked for 10 years for a industrial controls company and I have a wildly more conservative attitude towards safety than most of the engineers, especially CS people I know. Far as I can tell this doesn't correlate to a having an accredited degree at all.
- laretluval 8y agoDoes Schlitterbahn have a higher fatal accident rate than other water parks? Other amusement parks? This incident is horrific in its graphic details but is it actually exceptional?
- cowboysauce 8y agoGetting decapitated by a water slide is exceptional. The only other cases I can find about amusement park decapitations involve people being struck by roller coasters after they either entered a restricted area or were thrown out of a roller coaster. This case might be the only one of someone being decapitated while they stayed in the ride vehicle. Keep in mind that deaths at amusement parks are very rare, typically only two or three per year in the United States. And that's among all amusement parks. Most of those deaths are either due to pre-existing medical conditions or safety devices failing and people being ejected from the ride vehicle. This case is neither. The kid died because the tallest water slide in the world was designed through trial and error by a guy with no experience in physics or engineering.
- rustcharm 8y agoThe ride was also loaded badly with two very heavy passengers in back — exceeding 600 pounds — and a 65 pound kid in front. They need to enforce weight limits even at the risk of “offending” passengers.
- donarb 8y agoThe really tragic thing is that the father of the killed 10 year old was a Kansas legislator who voted for a cap on damages (max $300K) when someone is killed due to negligence. A quirk in Kansas law allows for Kansans injured by out-of-state parties to apply the laws of the state where the other party is located. So Scott Schwab parlayed the payout for his son's death from $300,000 to $20 million, all while denying the same to his constituents injured by Kansas companies. https://www.injuryrelief.com/blog/how-is-representative-scott-schwab-not-a-hypocrite/ https://www.injuryrelief.com/blog/how-is-representative-scot...
- tzs 8y agoAny of his constituents injured by out of state parties can do exactly the same thing he did. Any injury he suffers at the hands of a Kansas company will be subject to the same damage limits that such injuries suffered by his constituents are. I don't see how this is either hypocrisy (as alleged in the article you link to) or denying his constituents some benefit that is allowed to him (as you claim). I am curious why Kansas law allows in the case of an out-of-state tortfeasor applying the laws of the tortfeasor's state for damage limits. (I assume that it is still Kansas law determines whether or not a tort was committed?) If the tort occurred in another state, and the Kansas victim elected to sue in Kansas, then I believe that normal choice of law rules would have the Kansas court apply the laws of the state where the tort occurred, both for determining whether there is liability, and determining the damages (Kansas law, though, for rules of procedure and rules of evidence). But here the tort occurred in Kansas, so I'm confused. The only theory that comes to mind is that this is meant to make Kansas more attractive as a home state to companies. For instance, suppose you are going to set up a company that primarily serves customers in Kansas and Texas. If you make Texas your home, you will be subject to Texas damage limits on your torts in Texas against Texans, and because of the Kansas tort quirk you will also be subject to Texas damage limits on your torts against Kansans in Kansas. If, on the other hand, you make Kansas your home, you will will be subject to Texas damages on your torts against Texans in Texas, but on your torts against Kansans in Kansas the damages will be limited by the $300k Kansas limit on Kansas companies. If this is the reason, I wonder if it could be challenged on interstate commerce grounds? Making the damage limit on torts committed in Kansas lower for Kansas companies than for companies in states with higher damage limits advantages Kansas businesses.
- bb88 8y agoFTA: What’s more, according to court documents, the investigators learned that on July 3, 2014, one week before the ride’s grand opening, an engineering firm hired by Jeff and Schooley to perform accelerometer tests on Verrückt’s rafts had issued a report suggesting that if the combined weight of the three passengers in a raft was between 400 and 550 pounds—the weight Jeff and Schooley had agreed was appropriate—there was a chance the raft would go airborne on the second hill. The ride opened anyway, with the weight range unchanged. So that sounds pretty damning.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoFrom the indictment: 39. HENRY remarked, "[Verrückt] could hurt me, it could kill me, it is a seriously dangerous piece of equipment today because there are things that we don't know about. Every day we learn more.* I've seen what this one has done to the crash dummies and to the boats we sent down it. Ever since the prototype. And we had boats flying in the prototype too.* It's complex, it's fast, it's mean. If we mess up, it could be the end. I could die going down this ride." These guys are going to gaol for a long time. Unfortunately, that won't undo anything.
- bb88 8y agoThanks for that. That's as bad as testimony one can get.
- userbinator 8y agoAn interesting thing to calculate is the actual fatality rate, in deaths per passenger-km. The article mentions that ~100K riders had already taken it, and the ride is ~100m in length or 0.1km (data found elsewhere on the Internet), so that nicely works out to 1 in 10K passenger-km. In contrast, the fatality rate of driving in the US is in the 1 in 100M range, so the ride was far more dangerous than driving. That gives a good perspective on the risk.
- danepowell 8y agoI'm frankly surprised that more people haven't died at Schlitterbahn. Although this article appears to reference negligence at a corporate level, you have to keep in mind that the staff is comprised largely of high school aged kids, and all it takes is a few moments of inattention for someone to drown on these rides. Case in point, I could have easily drowned as a kid when one of the staff allowed too many riders in tubes to go down a chute at once, creating a log jam at the bottom that I got pulled underneath. The strong current held me underneath other riders' tubes for a good thirty seconds or so until the jam loosened. No one noticed or cared even as I came up coughing and sputtering. Don't get me wrong, most of the staff seemed to take their job pretty seriously, but in a place as crowded and inherently dangerous as this it doesn't take much for someone to get hurt.