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View Full Version : Disney Is Again Faulted in Coaster Accident - LA Times, 8/28/04



Darkbeer
08-28-2004, 04:55 AM
http://www.latimes.com/business/careers/work/la-me-thunder28aug28,1,6873518.story?coll=la-headlines-business-careers

QuikQuote: The report from the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health concluded that the unnamed ride operator had been on the job just three days when he performed procedures out of sequence July 8, causing two trains to collide as one returned to the station. Five people suffered minor injuries.
One independent expert on Disneyland, "Mouse Tales" author David Koenig, said the run of accidents may be a terrible case of bad luck. But, at a minimum, it creates a perception problem for the park, undercutting Disneyland contentions that such accidents are extremely rare, he said. "Disney has run out of its 'one-in-a-million' excuse," Koenig said.

JeffG
08-28-2004, 09:40 AM
The report from the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health concluded that the unnamed ride operator had been on the job just three days when he performed procedures out of sequence July 8, causing two trains to collide as one returned to the station. Five people suffered minor injuries.

I thought it was interesting that the L.A. Times decided not to name the ride operator (even though it was in the report) while the Orange County Register article (http://www.ocregister.com/ocr/2004/08/28/sections/business/business/article_219115.php) did refer to him by name and even included a bit of info attributed to his father.

I wonder what line of thinking goes into those decisions in the reporting. My own instinct is that it really doesn't accomplish anything to widely publish the ride operator's name and, consequentially, I think the Times made the more appropriate decision.

-Jeff

AVP
08-28-2004, 10:03 AM
I wonder what line of thinking goes into those decisions in the reporting. My own instinct is that it really doesn't accomplish anything to widely publish the ride operator's name and, consequentially, I think the Times made the more appropriate decision. We had that same debate behind-the-scenes here yesterday. One school of thought was that the DOSH report - which names all of the Disneyland employees - is public record, so there is no real reason to conceal their identity. Anyone can get a clean copy of that report just by asking, so it's not a big mystery.

The other school of thought was that we should redact all of the names of everyone involved, as it was the cause of the accident, not the specific people involved, that was the real story.

In the end, *we* chose to publish the DOSH report pretty much intact. We did redact the last names of the two injured passengers named in the report, and we did not print the first two pages of the report, which contained full names and phone numbers for all witnesses. Monday's Update does not name the cast member either.

Whichever decision we made, there was going to be someone who disagreed with it. We were criticized last time when we redacted the report, we were criticized this time for not redacting enough of it, and we would have been criticized no matter what we did.

I found it most interesting that the Times referred to him as the "unnamed ride operator." He wasn't unnamed - the Times chose not to report his name.

AVP

JeffG
08-28-2004, 01:45 PM
In the end, *we* chose to publish the DOSH report pretty much intact. We did redact the last names of the two injured passengers named in the report, and we did not print the first two pages of the report, which contained full names and phone numbers for all witnesses. Monday's Update does not name the cast member either.

This seems like a pretty reasonable choice to me. The report is public information and does contain the names, so it seems reasonable to leave it pretty much intact for those that are going to seek out the full set of details. I'm not sure I wouldn't have even voted to keep all of the information intact in the PDF, including the names of the witnesses, since that is part of the public record. I can easily see the reasoning for not doing so, though.

I do applaud your decision to not include the names in tomorrow's update and still think the Los Angeles Times was correct to also take that approach in their article (although I do agree that "unnamed" was a questionable choice of words). Those articles are likely to be the only source viewed by most with a more casual interest, so this strikes a better balance towards retaining a bit of the privacy of the employees.

-Jeff

Bruce Bergman
08-28-2004, 07:46 PM
Adrienne, I think you got the level of redaction just about perfect. Bravo! :D

All the information is public record, so anyone who really needs to know can track it down. The names of the CM's running the ride at the time might be relevant for some people to know - but their phone numbers and personal contact information really doesn't need to be printed.

And the names of the adult victims on the ride would be okay to print, but if they had a minor child with them releasing the parent's names might cause concerns for the child...

It all boils down to a newly trained CM operating the ride who may not have been perfectly clear on the procedures, and a flaw in the ride controls that allowed him to give a command at the wrong time or in the wrong sequence, causing an occupied block violation and collision.

The Operator in the tower goofed, yes - but really shouldn't be chastised or held up to any ridicule for it, because the control system shouldn't have allowed the simple goof to cascade into an occupied block violation and a train-to-train collision, it should have locked out or simply ignored the command. "I'm sorry, Dave, but I'm afraid I can't do that..." ;)

And when the people in the Tower realized the goof and slapped the 'Power Down E-stop' button, it should have activated every track brake in the place (including the ones on either side of the Station Switch between Brake Zone 4 and the Station) and stopped the moving train before the collision, but it did not. That is the one big as-yet-unanswered question that I still want to hear a definitive answer for.

:fez: --<< Bruce >>--

Darkbeer
08-30-2004, 04:12 AM
^ I agree, the ride Control System should have prevented the accident, no matter how many "conditions" that failed... it is the job of the Ride Control System to prevent ALL possible problems.... That is the job of the RCS!

JeffG
08-30-2004, 11:35 AM
^ I agree, the ride Control System should have prevented the accident, no matter how many "conditions" that failed... it is the job of the Ride Control System to prevent ALL possible problems.... That is the job of the RCS!

Having worked in computer software for many years, I know how difficult it is to predict every possible condition that could occur. Unfortunately, obscure bugs do sometimes only become evident once the unlikely conditions actually hit in real world operation.

The overall extremely positive operating history of this and other similar ride control systems do show that they work very hard to catch as many possible failure conditions as they possibly can. In reality, though, when you put yourself in the hands of any computerized control system, you are always taking the chance that an obscure, unanticipated series of mistakes will happen to hit right then.

This is a large part of the reason why proper and dilligent training of the human element is absolutely vital in any of these cases. Having employees that know what they are doing is key to minimizing the possibility of mistakes being made that weren't anticipated by the programmers.

-Jeff

Brian Noble
08-30-2004, 12:39 PM
Which brings us back to the (unanswered) question: why did the power disconnect not prevent the accident when the (well trained) lead realized there was about to be a block violation? Was it pressed too late to stop the train, or did the brakes fail in some way? I assume it was the former, but found it surprising that the report did not address the issue at all.

Crispy
08-30-2004, 03:03 PM
I agree. An e-stop is supposed to activate all brakes on a coaster. Why it didn't in this situation is a big question.

Cris